Word Art using Adobe InDesign

I recently got a computer upgrade at work and am now the proud user of a MacBook Pro. It’s been fun getting to learn my way around a Mac (I am a PC user at home). Like I mentioned in my Love Prints post, I’ve been fiddling around with InDesign. I learned InDesign in a “Graphic Design for Newspapers” class I took as part of my journalism degree, but we used Quark for page design at The Diamondback. At the business school, I do a fair bit of design work, but it’s mostly fliers, programs and the like, so the creativity quotient isn’t always at its highest. So I decided to bring my Mac home every so often to familiarize myself more with the program. It’s amazing what you can do! I’ve made a bunch of word art, which is exactly what it sounds like — art made of words. Here are some of my favorites:

No. 1: Born This Way word art

I am a big fan of Lady Gaga, but I am terrible with lyrics. I can botch up the lyrics to any song like it’s my job. And, let’s face it, Lady Gaga isn’t the easiest singer to understand all of the time. However, the Glee cast did a cover of Gaga’s “Born the way,” and I finally was able to understand all of her lyrics — and they are wonderful. With all of the bullying of gay teenagers, this song is truly a breath of fresh air and couldn’t have come at a better time. I find them truly inspiring and I believe wholeheartedly that whether you are gay, straight, transgender, bi, or any other label out there, you were born the way you are and should therefore be proud and own it. So, I played around with the chorus of the song to make this lyric art.

And here it is all printed, framed and beautiful:

I’m making a list of other inspirational/uplifting songs I want to turn into art. I think it could make a cool sort of gallery to have an entire wall dedicated to lyric art!

No. 2: Ocean Scene word art

This piece of art is truly experimental. I stumbled upon a text tool in InDesign that allows you to have your text follow an edge of a frame, so you are able to wrap words around in a square or around a circle… or, as I discovered, along a free-drawn line. I created a sea scape using the line tool, then I replaced all of the lines with text. I used different fonts, colors and sizes, and slowly but surely created a mini sea scape out of words and lines. I used tongue twisters, song lyrics, and poems for the individual shapes (i.e. “She sells sea shells” for the water; “Like a bird” for the flock of gulls; “Mr. Sun” for the sun; etc.). I think it would look cute in a kid’s room or in a beach-themed room. What do you think? It was a fun little experiment!

No. 3: Words for friends

My co-worker Millicent celebrated a big birthday in 2010 so we threw her a hot-pink-and-Michael-Jackson-themed surprise party to celebrate. My eloquent boss Rebecca wrote Mill the sweetest, funniest poem that Mill later asked me to play around with so she could use it as art in her office.

She printed it on a textured, neutral paper and it turned out fabulous:

I’m brainstorming other fun uses for the program. If you have any ideas, feel free to share! I pretty much jump at any chance to take my Mac home and play around with the Adobe Suite.