Create impactful text and graphic designs

To apply text effects to typefaces in StyleForge, simply add text to the canvas then select it. The Text Menu will appear at the bottom of the screen. Using the controls on the Text Menu you can choose to add lineal or radial gradients fills, stroke borders, or text effects like Long Shadow, Glitch, Splice, Hollow, Echo, Glow, Expand or EDM. Each visual effect under the Text Effect button (Zap Icon) includes presets with visual examples of what the effect looks like when applied to text. Click on a preset and adjust the settings to your liking. Text-on-path does not feature advanced effects but do support gradient fills, drop shadows and perspective, skew, individual character rotation, letter and word spacing.

StyleForge lets you create new text that is attached to a path. When you add new text using the Add Text panel, you can select the type of text such as a title or subtitle and the color from your brand kit. Right below the color selector you will see options to add an Angle, Circle or Arch. These are three of the five text-on-path features we offer. The new text will be created on the selected path type. To apply text-on-path effects to existing text, select the text on the canvas and from the Text Menu choose the Type on Path button. You will see five text-on-path choices: Angle, Circle, Arch, Rise or Flag. When you select one of these options your text will now have that path effect and you will see controls that allow you to Skew X, Skew Y, Character Rotation, change the Font Size, Letter Spacing, Word Spacing or stroke the path. Angle text-on-path also allows you to Snap to Baseline making the bottom of the text always align with the angle of the path.

When you apply a Text on Path effect, you will see a path line under the text along with larger blue point circles. These allow you to change the shape of the path and are known as bezier control points which reshape the bezier path the text is following. Drag the point to move it and the path reshapes. There are bezier end-points and bezier curve points. The curve points arch paths along curves and when you click on a curve point, two handles appear, one on either side of the point. Adjusting these handles will change the arch of the curve and result in the text reshaping as the curve reshapes.

You can also apply Blend Modes to both text and graphics. Blend Modes merge the selected element into other design elements on the canvas that are below them. StyleForge includes 15 blend modes: Multiply, Screen, Overlay, Darken, Lighten, Color Burn, Hard Light, Soft Light, Difference, Exclusion, Hue, Saturation, Color and Luminosity. Each element type you select on the canvas, such as text or design shapes or images allow you to set blend modes. These can be combined with opacity and color and gradient fill settings.

When you place text over images you can use the Text Background effect to apply a white, black or colored fill that surrounds the text. This is a useful design technique for creating separation between headlines or even body text, and elements below them such as a background image. Try using it by selecting a text element then going to the Text Menu and choosing the Text Background button. There you can control the padding (area surrounding the text), opacity, horizontal and vertical spacing and the corner radius (rounding) of the background.

Yes, you can apply shadows, gradients, text backgrounds and certain other effects together. Some effects are achieved only when applied by themselves, such as a Long Shadow. If you have a standard drop shadow on text or a graphic then apply the Long Shadow effect, the normal shadow is removed while the Long Shadow is applied. This is done so you have a clean, hard edged angular shadows which is the purpose for this effect.