It’s all about the power of “Text on a path”! Your imagination can take this option beyond simple arched texts and into drawing shapes with the text it self.

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We saw this typography poster and tought “Why not make it web-to-print?”

Before you start

• Import the image that you will use as a guideline for the text drawing.
• Add a page frame (Layout/Page Setup/Add Page Frame). This will create a rectangular shape with the exact same size as the paper size of your template and place it as a bottom layer.
• Input the dummy text and turn it into a variable web-to-print field.

Draw the curves

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Select the Freehand tool (F5) and draw the lines that will be the text paths.

Note. You can adjust the Freehand smoothing properties depending on what is needed for a particular curve. A maximum value (100) means that the curve will be made smooth after you have finished drawing it.

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Select the reference bitmap and delete it when all curves were drawn. The result should be similar to this.

Fit Text To Path

In this example, all the text fields have the same object name and therefore the text that the user will input is going to repeat itself on all the curves in the template.

To save some time on naming the objects, copy the variable web-to-print dummy text that you made at the beginning and fit each copy to a path as you go along.

Note. To change the input field name after you fit the dummy text on a path, use the object data manager.

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Select the dummy text and go to Text/Fit Text To Path in the top menu.

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Move the cursor near the beginning of one of the curves. You should see a wireframe preview.

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Click to confirm the text fitting. The result should be similar to this. Repeat this step for all other curves.

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Make the paths invisible since we don’t want them to show in the web to print template. Select them all, open the Object Properties docker (Alt+Enter) and set their outline value to None.

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The result should be similar to this.

Pitfall

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The text length is somewhat of an issue. This is because you can’t add the auto font resize option on a text that’s fitted on a path. Therefore, if the user inputs a longer text the characters that go over the limit will appear on top of each other and will be unreadable.

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A good idea is to set the font size of each text line to a value that will make the text as long as the path and set a maximum length of the text field in the Field editor on the site.

All done!

Our web-to-print software can handle this effect easily! Upload the template into your catalog and test it.

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Try this web-to-print template.

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Download the FREE CorelDRAW template file.

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