Get creative with type

Warp your favourite saying into the shape of a portrait using this fun Photoshop technique. Jason Parnell-Brookes shows you how

Put a new twist on your portraits by including a favourite poem or saying

Text and images are sometimes hard to pair together well. We’ve all seen the typical work of novice designers, where a black box is simply laid over the image and white or coloured text placed on top. But there’s another way to team the two – and we don’t need to be professional designers to do it.

By using some basic tools in Photoshop, we can make our text wrap around the subject’s face in a portrait and double up on creative content. A photograph will punch through the distorted text in the final image.

Once you’ve done it, you can apply this technique to any portraits – perhaps a homemade birthday card with your favourite person and poem, or a motivational speech by one of your idols. Let’s take a closer look at how it’s done.