[Tutorial] How to Make Microsoft Word Text Effects and Typography Art

[Lunix I]

Most of your Word documents are likely set in standard, drab Times New Roman or Calibri typography, perhaps with the occasional cheesy Word Art thrown in for variety. Yet Word actually includes a number of text effect tools that give you everything you need to make beautiful art from your words.

In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to create the cool text effects you want in every modern version of Microsoft Word, using its advanced type and typography formatting features. Once you’re done, you’ll know the tricks that I used to make Word templates that look great.

How to Make a Stylish Text Effect in MS Word (Quick Video)

In this quick screencast video, you'll learn how to go beyond default Word Art options and make a cool text effect in Microsoft Word, using text formatting tools to create stylish typography:

For more detailed information on how to make beautiful Word text effects, review the step-by-step instructions below.

How to Make MS Word Text Effects (Step by Step)

Learn how to apply both standard text effects and more advanced options inside Microsoft Word’s Format pane, such as Drop Shadow and Reflection. Discover how to transform your text into cool typography art. Let's get started:

Set Up a New Page in MS Word

Start by creating a new document by either clicking File > New or pressing the Control-N shortcut. To set properties like the page orientation and the page size, jump into the Layout tab.

If you plan to print your document and you already know the final paper size, it is important to set it as a first step. Why? Microsoft Word lets you easily scale any object, but some properties, like the outline width, remain unchanged. Font size also stays the same during the resizing, and has to be updated manually. Working in the final paper size right from the beginning helps save time in the future.

There are two things you need to know about the Layout tab before we set the final page size values. First, the Size drop-down menu contains only the paper sizes which are possible to print with the currently selected printer. In other words, you cannot set an A3 paper size when your printer can only print up to A4 documents. To fix that, you can jump to the File > Print menu and change the printer to a different one for a second, for example the Microsoft XPS Document Writer, which is a "virtual printer" that only saves files locally to your computer.