Text layout doesn’t have to be boring. Designer David Carson became famous using unique typographic effects, one of which was flowing text in an unusual way. In many magazines, text not only conveys information but joins the photos and colors to become art and part of the style of the magazine as well. Here’s a way to thread text on paths, which has many possibilities once you get the basic concept. Let’s thread text on path shapes to create unique magazine layout designs.

Step 1
Open a new Illustrator file and place a raster image, or open a vector image. This will provide as the background to our mock magazine layout. Optionally, pick one which curves or straight lines to flow the text around.

Step 2
Next, let’s create a path the text will initially flow on. You can create Circle, or us the Pen tool, but for this example I drew a curvy line with the Pencil tool. Optionally, make the Stroke black to see it; make the Fill None.

Step 3
Now we’ll insert the text. Click-and-hold the Text tool to bring out the other options. Click the Type On a Path tool. Click on the path where you want to have the text begin to flow.

Step 4
Go to File>Place and select a Microsoft Word document or another text document to insert. Once it is selected, click Place. Click OK in the next dialog. The text will flow from the point we selected.

Step 5
Select the text you want to change (font style, size, for example) and change it by selecting a new style with the Control Palette. I changed the title to a little bit bigger size font for emphasis.

Step 6
Now let’s flow the text from the path to another area. With the Selection tool, click the little red box in the lower right-hand corner of the path. Where we click next, the text will begin where it was cut off from our path (assuming your path was too short for the entire text document’s contents). Click-and-drag an area to have the text flow into a rectangle shaped text box.

Step 7
To make a unique text flow, with the Selection tool, hover over a corner of the new text box and click-and-drag to rotate it. If there is still text to be flowed, click the red box again, this time in the new text box. Click-and-drag to make one or two more text boxes, repeating the steps to link the threaded text.

Step 8
With the Selection tool, click-and-drag the boxes or paths to move the text to your liking. What’s cool about this technique is that the text flows automatically if you insert or delete text. For example, if you added more to the title, the text would flow to the next text box. There are many possibilities with flowing threaded text: try flowing text from a Circle to a Spiral, or from two block paragraphs into a wave shape drawn with the Pencil tool. All of these can create unique and unusual magazine-style layouts.

Let’s say you need add an image to another one, but it needs to look seamless. The image we’ll be adding to the other needs to have the same angle and texture of the other one. We can use the lens distortion tool and a layer blending mode for this example, and it’s also a fun way to learn the lens distortion tool and layer blending modes.

Step 1
Here’s the image we want to overlay onto another one.

© ISTOCKPHOTO/LYNN CHEALANDER

Step 2
Here’s the image we’ll need to add the other image to. To use these examples, right-click each and save the images to your computer and open them both in Photoshop.

Step 3
Select the Move tool

Step 4
Click-and-drag the beach photo onto the television photo. Drag the beach photo so it covers the television. We now have two layers.

Step 5
With the Move tool selected, make sure the Show Transform Control is selected. Click the Layer 1, the beach layer, in the layers palette.

Step 6
Click the Eye icon of Layer 1 in the layers palette in order to see the television layer, seeing where the beach will show once we remove the area outside of the television screen. Click-and-drag the corner of the beach photo to resize it so more of it will show on the screen; hold Shift to maintain proportion. Make sure all of the television screen is covered. After resizing, press Enter to make the changes.

Step 7
Click the Eye icon next to Layer 1, the beach layer, to hide it for now. Click the Background layer, the television layer.

Step 8
Now we’ll need to draw a selection around the television screen. To select those corners, we’ll need to use the Pen tool. Select the Pen tool.

Step 9
Click (not click-and-drag) along the border of the screen near the corner. Then click-and-drag to draw a curving line on the side. The Pen tool may take a little bit to get used to, but generally click somewhere near the beginning of a curve, and click-and-drag near the ending of the curve.

Step 10
Draw the shape around the edge of the television screen, until we complete the shape.

Step 11
In the Paths palette, right-click the Shape 1 Vector Mask and click Make Selection.

Step 12
Press OK.

Step 13
In the Layer palette, click the Eye icon of the shape layer since we don’t need it, and click the Eye icon of Layer 1 and click Layer 1 to select it.

Step 14
Go to Select>Inverse and press Backspace to delete the pixels outside of the television screen on the beach layer.

Step 15
Change the layer blending mode of Layer 1 to Overlay.

Step 16
This overlays the beach image onto the television screen, but the beach photo’s angle needs to protrude a little bit in the middle to fit the television screen.

Step 17
With Layer 1 still selected in the layers palette, go to Filter>Distort>Lens Correction. Set the Remove Distortion to about -14, or until it adds some barrel distortion to fit the screen.

Step 18
The problem here is that the beach is now moved outside of the screen area. Click the Eye icon of the shape from earlier and repeat steps 11-14 to remove the area around it again. Now we have an image that is seamlessly blended with another, using both the overlay blending mode and adding some lens distortion to match the background. Be sure to remove any pixels that on top of the area outside of the screen by selecting it with the polygonal lasso tool and press Backspace to remove them.