How to make coloured text stand out on the same colour background.

We can’t write white on white or black on black, can we?

Here is the trick I’ve used to make text stand out even when it has the same colour as the dominating colour of the background. The text needs to be put inside a box with a semiopaque colour fill. Above is the card I designed for a relative’s jubilee. Cherries in the background have the same colour theme as the message inside the box. This technique is also useful for magazine design.

This is how it works:

– open a blank document, choose landscape (horizontal) layout if it is going to be a card, vertical if you are making a poster of a flyer;

– drag and drop the photo into the Pages document from iPhoto or Desktop, resize and position as needed;

– next insert a Text Box (or a rectangle, it doesn’t matter). Text Box by default doesn’t have a colour fill, go to Graphic Inspector and add Colour fill to the Text Box. Here I chose a custom grey colour (CMYK: 14, 10, 8, 0), but Silver from the Crayon Box in the Colour Viewer would work as well. Text box sits ‘on top’ of the background photo, resize the box so that the photo can be seen in wide margins all around the box;

– next type your text in the box as you would in a word processing document;

Click on colour well

– formatt the text in Text Inspector: here I centred the text, then aligned it to the centre of the box. Then highlight all text (Command+A), make it bigger and change colour to one that is similar to the main colour theme of the background photo. Here a preset colour from the Crayon Box – Cayenne – works well (CMYK: 11, 85, 96, 33);

Drag slider to reduce opacity

– next, click away, somewhere in the document, and then click again on the Text Box to select it as an object. Go to Graphic Inspector and click on the colour chooser (well) under the drop–down menu bar. Then in Colour Well reduce opacity to around 75 percent. Now you see that the background photo is just visible through the coloured Text Box and the text, which has the same main colour as the background, stands out and is clear and readable.

It’s a simple trick that adds striking effect to your designs. If you design a cover for a magazine or a brochure with a large photo that covers all space and goes over the edges(bleeds), this is one good way to make straplines (text) on the cover clear and visible. For print publications, including posters and cards, it is very important – passersby or people browsing in a news agent need to see instantly what’s in the magazine, or what the card is about.

Please read about 'Cover Design Tricks: Making Text Stand Out'. Note the semiopaque box in the bottom left corner of the cover. And also 'How to Outline Text in Pages' and 'Fading Out Background Image'.

How to Outline Text in Pages (Cover Design Tips)

Text outlined in Pages: two boxes

Text with characters that have coloured outlines is an attractive design feature. It is often used for covers, posters and headings on coloured background or when superimposed over photos. 

But can it be done in Pages? 

The quick answer is no, that option is not available, but there is a simple, if a bit fiddly workaround.

Here is how it goes, assuming you want a white outline to darker text to make it stand out on dark background.

- Create two text boxes in your Pages document, in Wrap inspector uncheck ‘object causes wrap'. 

- Type text in one of the boxes, then in Text Inspector select the colour you want for the main text – the one to be outlined. Then copy all text and paste it in the second box.

- Give the second box dark colour background – in Graphics Inspector click on colour fill and choose colour, then select all text, change its colour to white and enlarge the text size by three or four points. In my example (image above) reddish brown letters are 24 points and white letters are 27 points. Next, click outside the box, click on it again to select and make it larger than the first one – so that you can 'slip' it under the first one.  

- Move the box with white text ‘under’ the one with dark text. If it goes over, go to Arrange menu and Send it to Back. Continue moving the second box around until darker text slips ‘inside’ the white. This is the fiddliest bit of the whole work. Characters may not superimpose correctly, so go to Text Inspector and try ‘spacing’ (also called kerning), i.e. increasing or decreasing the space between characters.

- When you are satisfied select both boxes and Group them under Arrange menu.

Note how text outline is used 

If you are not satisfied and eventually give up, then check your Applications folder, you may already have another programme that allows outlining text. For instance, between 2005 and 2007 Apple bundled ComicLife with its basic installation package. In ComicLife you can give text several outlines. The programme is very simple to use. Click on 'Lettering' at the bottom of the page, type your text, then click on Details tab on the right and change the number and colour of outlines, colour of text, gradient etc.  

In the example below there are three outlines. When you are finished in ComicLife just copy-paste outlined text straight into your Pages project. It imports as a PDF.  If you don't have ComicLife download it from Plasq.com.

Text outlined in ComicLife

This post is a follow-up to the article 'Cover Tricks: Making Text Stand Out',
read a later article on how to make text stand out against the photo in the background (see the semiopaque box in the bottom left corner of the cover above).


Read more tips on cover design in 'How to Separate People from Background' and how to use 'patches' to make photos work better in this article.  

How to separate people in the photo from the background

This beautiful picture by Mike Forster was on the cover of a February issue of our magazine with Valentine's theme.

I wanted to put the just married couple in the picture in front of the magazine strapline while keeping the background behind the text. This is a powerful design trick, very popular in print media.

And it can be done with just the tools available in Pages.

There are two ways to 'separate' the people in the picture from the background and put them 'in front' of the text:

- use Draw Tool from the Shapes menu in the Tool Bar to create a cutout
- use Instant Alpha to remove background

Here I used the 'cutout' method.

- First import the photo in the Pages document, resize and position it as needed.
- Then choose Draw Tool from the Shapes menu in the Tool Bar and create a shape which 'traces' the contours of figures you want to cut out from the original photo. Set object fill to none and stroke to none in Object Inspector so that you can see the photo underneath. The more dots you use the better.
- Third, after the free draw shape is finished, set it to Image Fill in the Object Inspector and choose the original photo for the Fill.
- In the Fill submenu choose Scale to fill... With luck the original photo will fit the free draw contour exactly. If not edit the shape by clicking on it twice (not double clicking - click, pause, click again). You should see little red dots. Click on them one by one to edit the shape (drag them or move with keyboard arrows) and make the photo sit tightly within the shape.
- Now, under Arrange menu, bring your cutout to front, so that it overlaps the straplines at the top of the page. Adjust the position of the cutout on the page.
- Then select the original photo and Send it to Back (Arrange menu) so that the background you had cut out from the image in front sits behind the magazine title and other text.

You may find that the original photo in the back shows bits you don't want to be seen. Resize and reposition it so that only the empty background shows. Here I had to import the original photo again to leave just the empty sky in the back. In the image below you can see parts of the two photos sitting in the back. I moved them for demonstration purposes.

- Next, create Text Boxes for other magazine straplines highlighting contents etc.

In print the seam between the three photos is practically invisible.

I also wanted to put the bare foot of the bride on top of the bottom strapline - but by then ran out of time.

The Instant Alpha method may be easier, but you must have a photo with consistent colour in the background. Otherwise the Alpha tool will be erasing elements of the image you want to keep.

Anyway, again for demonstration purposes, here is the same photo with the grey Normandy Winter sky removed with Instant Alpha and replaced with the bright blue Summer one. The Summer sky photo is behind the main photo, masked and mask resized to fit the photo dimensions.




Read more about cover design tricks in 'How to Outline Text in Pages'.

Please read these articles on I Work in Pages where other uses of Draw Tool and Instant Alpha are described:
Creating clipart and original shapes in Pages
Creating your own clipart with Instant Alpha

and about another design trick used in this magazine cover - opaque patch on the Willys Jeep:
Last minute corrections - use patchwork