How to make fancy headline text like WordArt

Fancy headline text lives under Insert > WordArt in Publish by Zaweba. Choose one of eight styles (bold outline, shadowed, hollow, classic serif, neon, retro, spaced capitals or elegant italic) and the text is sized to fill the width. It stays real, editable text, searchable too, and that holds in PDFs. Publish is free, offline software for Windows.

A strong headline is often the thing that makes a poster work. People glance at a noticeboard for a second or two, and the headline is what they read.

Picking a style

Each style has its own character. Bold outline and shadowed are loud and readable from a distance, good for a sale flyer or a fete poster. Hollow is lighter and works well over a coloured shape. Classic serif and elegant italic suit weddings, certificates and formal dinners. Neon and retro bring a party or a gig to life. Spaced capitals is calm and modern, handy for a heading that should feel tidy rather than loud.

Insert one, type your words, and look at it on the whole page. If it fights with the picture, try another style. It takes seconds to swap.

Text effects on any text box

WordArt isn't the only route. Any text box can have a letter outline and a text shadow, set under Properties > Text effects. That's useful when you want a headline in your own font and size but with a little extra punch.

You might keep the body font for the headline, add a thin outline in a darker shade and a small shadow, and get something that matches the rest of the page while still standing out.

Why real text matters

Some tools turn fancy text into a picture. That looks fine until you spot a typo, need to change the date, or want someone to be able to search the PDF. In Publish the WordArt stays text, so you click in and edit it like anything else. In exported PDFs it's still selectable and searchable text.

That also means find and replace reaches it. If the event moves from Saturday to Sunday, one replace updates the headline as well as the body.

Making headlines look good

Keep them short. Three to six words is usually plenty for a poster headline; the details belong underneath.

Give it room. A headline jammed against the edge or a picture loses its impact. Use the guides and the margins, and let the WordArt fill the width it's given rather than the whole page.

Match the colours to the page. Name your colours in the document palette and use them in the headline too. If you change the palette later, the headline changes with everything else.

Go easy on mixing styles. One fancy headline per page is plenty. Body text and subheadings should be plain so the headline has something to stand out from.

Also try Insert > Page parts, which has a banner heading and an attention getter that pair well with a WordArt title.

Pick a template, swap its headline for a WordArt style, and you'll see straight away how much the right heading changes the feel of the page.