Recently a reader asked me if she could “steal” my “Humor In Writing” image to use on her blog, because she liked it so much. I said yes, of course, because I’m nice like that. But I also said, hey – I made it myself using MS Office, my wheezy old desktop here at Chateau StMoo, and my WordPress site.
Trust me, if I can do it, anyone can (assuming you have equipment similar to mine.) It’s easy to make your own. Of course the quality isn’t excellent, but it’s a quick and dirty way to get the job done when you’re in a hurry and can’t afford the proper thing.
Disclaimer: don’t think this means you don’t need good, professional help with design, especially for important things like your branding, website, etc.!
Here’s what I do…bear in mind that the functions may vary a bit depending on which versions of the software you’re using, but you should be able to find equivalents quite easily.
1.Decide what words to feature. OK, a no-brainer, but be sure to know what it is you’re promoting, and what words will resonate with your readers/customers.
2.Open a new document in MS Word. Probably best to select the landscape format rather than the default portrait.
3.Type in the word or words of your logo or other visual. Make sure there aren’t too many words: the fewer the better.
4.Select and deploy “center” and also select a font size of about 14 or more.
5.Scroll through all the type/font styles available on your MS Word or word processing programme.
6.Choose one you like, that makes your text look good.
7.Choose a color you like. If you have a laser printer you can be fairly subtle in your choice, but if you use an inkjet version bear in mind that the printed colors aren’t very bright. I have an inkjet printer and I find anywhere within the red-purple-bright blue range works OK, but other colors are too dull.
8.Raise the size of the font as much as you can. To make more space on the page, change the margins to as low as they will go. The bigger the original image, the sharper it will look when it’s shrunk down and produced to its final size.
9.Print the page out. Scan the page and save it.
10.Get it up on the screen. Right click it and select “open with” – then “Microsoft Office Picture Manager.”
11.Select “edit picture.” Using the menu in the sidebar you can now crop and/or resize the image as you want. If the color looks a bit wishy-washy, select “brightness and contrast” then adjust “midtone” until it looks better and brighter.
12.Save your final edit as a JPG. Then you can upload it to your WordPress blog as you would any other JPG image. Voilà!
Hope that’s helpful.
Sz
While you’re here, don’t forget to stop by my Bookshop…books and eBooks to help you write better – and to give to friends and family (don’t forget the Holiday Season is coming soon)…
Comments
You are not alone. I have also done it this way 🙂
Aha! Works well, doesn’t it, Angelika?
I was about to answer with ‘as long as the printer is decent enough’, but Jan’s printscreen idea doesn’t have that problem. Great idea!
Glad it’s not just me who “cheats” lol The only thing I do differently is use the printscreen and paste into an image editor then save.
That’s interesting, Jan – thanks for sharing the “printscreen” tip!
Great idea! thanks for sharing, I will have a go at this. I prefer to use my own photographs when I can, but it’s not always possible, and this gives me another graphic tool to use to break up chunks of text easily and for free. Thank you!
Susan,
This is the kind of stuff that I’d love to be able to do, but I have no clue . . . so thank you! I’m going to save this so when I have a bit more time I can experiment with it!
Hi Amy – good to see you here. Glad you find that tip about text images helpful. It’s really easy! I would have replied sooner but I got caught up reading the story of vomiting Nellie. Is she still with you? Readers – check out Amy’s chicken story and blog – brilliant
http://vomitingchicken.com/vomiting-chicken-explained/