Tutorial: How-To Fill Type with Artwork in Quark

How would you fill type with artwork or imagery? Would you do it in Photoshop or Illustrator? If the artwork-filled type is going to end up in your QuarkXPress layout, why worry about transparency, clipping path, or image preview issues? Why not just fill the type directly within XPress?

One of the biggest time-eaters in lay­ing out a pub­li­ca­tion is jump­ing over to image-editing or draw­ing pro­grams. Too often we think cre­at­ing or tweak­ing sim­ple effects like fill­ing text with an image (or images) can only be done in Photoshop or Illustrator. Whenever pos­si­ble, stay in your lay­out appli­ca­tion. It will save time and allow you to keep your mind on your Quark work­flow with­out break­ing con­cen­tra­tion to switch over to Illustrator or Photoshop.

The type in Figure 1 was filled with­out the aid of Illustrator or Photoshop in QuarkXPress 6.5, though it works just as well in XPress 6.0 and even 5. In a few quick steps I’ll show you how to not only fill type with a sin­gle image, but also how to fill each char­ac­ter of a word with dif­fer­ent artwork.

Figure 1: Each let­ter is filled with a sep­a­rate picture.

Fill a Word with Artwork

1. Start a new print lay­out in QuarkXPress.

2. Create a text box and type your text. Keep it sim­ple: This tech­nique only works with a sin­gle line of text, and it looks much bet­ter when applied to short words or phrases.

3. Apply your text for­mat­ting, choose a thick, beefy, or bold type­face at a large point size. For my “Tampa” design (see Figure 2) I used Thomas E. Harvey’s type­face Coliseum set at 250 pts. Leading does­n’t mat­ter, but adjust the kern­ing, scal­ing, and oth­er styling options until you have exact­ly the look you’re after.

Figure 2: Set a sin­gle line of text in a new text box.

4. Highlight your text with the Content Tool and, from the Style menu, choose Text To Box. After that, you should now have a pic­ture box–denoted by an X through it–in the shape of your text (see Figure 3). Above that will be your orig­i­nal text box.

Figure 3: A text-shaped pic­ture box.

5. With either the Item or Content Tools, select your new word-shaped pic­ture box and choose File > Get Picture, or press CMD+E (Mac) / CTRL+E (Win). Voila! Now you’ve got text filled with a pic­ture (see Figure 4).

Figure 4: Get Picture brings the image into the text-shaped pic­ture box.

6. Adjust the image with the Content Tool until it fills your box, right-click and choose Fit Picture to Box from the con­text menu, right-click and choose Fit Box to Picture from the con­text menu, or use the Measurements Palette to align and size your fill image.

Since the text is now a stan­dard pic­ture box, you can manip­u­late it just as you would any oth­er pic­ture box. As you can see in Figure 5, I stretched my filled text ver­ti­cal­ly to bet­ter accom­mo­date the pho­to with­out squash­ing the skyline.

Figure 5: The fin­ished artwork-filled-text.

Once you have this tech­nique down, you’ll prob­a­bly won­der if there’s a way to place a sep­a­rate image inside each letter–without hav­ing to repeat the entire process for each let­ter, cre­at­ing indi­vid­ual text box­es and con­vert­ing them pic­ture box­es. Would I tease you like that if there weren’t such a way? Perish the thought.

Fill Each Character with Its Own Artwork

1. Follow steps 1–5 in the pre­vi­ous sec­tion to cre­ate your text-shaped pic­ture box and insert your first image.

2. Select the text-shaped pic­ture box with the Item Tool and choose Item > Split > Outside Paths (see Figure 6). If you choose All Paths instead of Outside Paths, Quark will break up com­pound paths; open areas like the coun­ters of a, e, b, d, p, and so on will become sep­a­rate objects unto them­selves. All Paths opens even greater cre­ative options, but for now stick with Outside Paths.

Figure 6: Choose Item > Split > Outside Paths to break indi­vid­ual com­pound paths from the group.

3. Depending on your ver­sion of XPress and how fast it redraws the screen, you may or may not notice a change come over your text-shaped pic­ture box. Rest assured, some­thing fun­da­men­tal has changed. The pic­ture may seem to shift or repli­cate across the let­ters. Each box should now con­tain its own inde­pen­dent copy of the image you placed in step 1 above. 

4. With the Item Tool still select­ed, click away from your pic­ture box to des­e­lect it, then click on a sin­gle let­ter, which is now a stand­alone pic­ture box unto itself. Get Picture and place a new image. See how the image only fills the one let­ter? Do the same for each of the remain­ing let­ters in your word or phrase (see Figure 7).

Figure 7: Five let­ters hold­ing five sep­a­rate images.

Last Words

The Item > Split > Outside Paths com­mand splits the com­pound pic­ture box into its con­stituent parts, treat­ing each as its own self-contained pic­ture box. Thus each can hold its own image–or col­or­ing or blend, for that mat­ter. To manip­u­late the word as a whole again, just select all let­ters by drag­ging a rec­tan­gle across them with the Item Tool and choos­ing Item > Group. My fin­ished logo, com­plete with strokes and addi­tion­al text box­es, is in Figure 8.

Figure 8: My final logo, ready for appli­ca­tion onto brochures, t‑shirts, and iden­ti­ty material.

Filling words with pic­tures can pro­vide dra­mat­ic effect, but, like any oth­er cool tech­nique, it’s eas­i­ly abused. Use this tech­nique only when a project war­rants it; don’t try to fit artwork-filled text into a project just because you now know how.

Want to learn how to fill type with art­work in InDesign?

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