How I Created Fur Effect Typography

The first thing I did in the process of creating my typography was finding a theme
that I wanted to work with, the actual things my typography would be saying, and
some inspiration. Me and my tutor came up with the idea of Fur-effect typography,
this was formulated because I decided that my final magazine layout design would be
a Fashion-magazine. We decided that it would be a good idea to use Fur! as the
main theme because fur is something that goes in and out of style, like polka-dots and
stripes. "fter me and my tutor came up with this idea, I decided that I would take
inspiration from dalmatian-print for my fur-effect typography.
The title of the article within the magazine layout would be #pots "re $ot! this
means that the dalmatian-print is not only %isually represented, but presented in the
title too, plus the title #pots "re $ot! is catchy and memorable.
#o, I went online and looked at tutorials on how to create fur-effect typography, and
&ust generally how to create fur-effects in 'hotoshop. The first tutorial I followed and
e(perimented with was this Wikihow )use command and left click to open the
hyperlink* tutorial. This shows you how to simply and efficiently create a fur-effect
in 'hotoshop.
This was the final result of me e(perimenting with this certain techni+ue,
It was a nice effect but it really didn-t ha%e that .-d fur-effect that I was looking for, I
wanted something a lot more shapely and bouncy, I wanted something that looked
similar to a pillow or cushion, and I wanted it to look like you could actually reach
out and touch it. It certainly didn-t ha%e the impact I was looking for, I tried
e(perimenting with the /i+uify tool on 'hotoshop to try and make it more .-d-
looking, here are the results of a bit of e(perimenting,
I really didn-t like the way this turned out, it &ust looks really messy and sharp,
nothing like what I wanted. It doesn-t look %ery .-d or cushiony and it &ust doesn-t
look %ery nice. "fter this I decided that the techni+ue &ust wasn-t what I was looking
for and didn-t gi%e me the effect I wanted for the fur-effect te(t. #o I went online
again and looked at a couple more tutorials before chancing upon this %ery helpful
fur-effect tutorial on a site called 0ichworks. "fter following the steps and
e(perimenting a little bit I ended up with these results,
I followed the tutorial, completing one letter at a time, and ended up with the result
abo%e. The image of dalmatian-fur that I used was +uite a bad-+uality image and
somewhat pi(elated, I also tried scaling the image to make the spots bigger and
smaller, using the same techni+ue as in the 0ichworks tutorial. I e(perimented +uite a
bit and ended up with these results,
It actually took me +uite a while to get the techni+ue right, as the tutorial was written
by someone who was using a Windows operating system and not a Mac operating
system. 1ut in the end I managed to get the techni+ue down and create the letters. I
actually used about three different dalmatian fur images as I kept finding %isual flaws
with the images I had picked, the image below is actually the third and last image I
used when o%erlaying the te(t.
I actually edited the image I was using to gi%e it a more furry! look,
The main reasons I changed the images I was using, was because of +uality, scaling
and pi(elation issues. The first batch of letters I completed were a bit too furry, so I
decided to tone-down the fur-effect and decided to focus a little more on the actual
spots. "nother reason why I decided to tone-down the fur was because the effect was
making it difficult to distinguish the letterforms from each other.
The second batch of letterforms had a lot more spots on them, and the fur effect was
no longer hindering the legibility of the letterforms, howe%er the letterforms still
lacked that professional look I wanted, so I download a high +uality image, toned-
down the fur effect e%en more, and ended up with what, in my opinion, was a
professional and %ery chic header for my magazine layout. I didn-t really e(periment
much more with the typography, apart from scaling and toning-down the fur-effect.
#o e%en though I thought I wanted a really furry-looking font, it turned out that I
needed was something not so hea%y on the fur effect.
"s you can see, it-s +uite difficult to distinguish the letterforms.
I changed the image I was using and toned down the fur-effect it looks a lot more
legible but still looks rather messy.
These are a lot better don-t you think2, I used the edited image, toned-down the fur
effect and made sure that the letterforms were legible. It looks a lot more professional
like this in my opinion.
I wanted the fur typography to ha%e a peek-a-boo effect where the spots became
smaller and more %isible as the typography went on, I really thought this effect was a
good idea and was +uite creati%e. "ll I did to create this effect was change the size of
the underlying dalmatian-fur print image, and then repeated the techni+ue.
1ut when it came to using the typography in my page spread design it became
apparent that because the letterforms were so different with the smaller spots, "re
$ot! looked as if it was a completely different set of letters. They also looked like
they were different sizes, because of this it didn-t look %ery professional. #o I had to
re-create some of the letters, and make the spots look e(actly the same as the first
word #pots!.
This was the final result,
This actually looks a lot better than the pre%ious screenshot3 Thanks to my efforts, the
typography was now ready to be used in my layouts3