Production video - Adding Structure

In this video we’re going to look at type or text. The first thing we need to do, is grab the type tool, and then we’re going to look out for a couple of things.

There’s some shapes that the cursor can change into that you want to be aware of. Now, by default it’s this square here, and that is great OK. Now watch what happens to the cursors' changes when I get in front of this box, - because I have the Hero Graphic selected here - it changes to the circle around it. There’s this other one which is the dotted line. Now this is really what I’m looking for.

I want to dump a bit of text on a layer by itself, that I can move around to kind of work on. If I click on this layer, what it’s going to do is, it’s going to turn my rectangle - my Hero Graphic - into a shaped box for it to fit inside, Watch this, if I click inside, it’s going to keep typing, and it’s going to use the edges of this box. OK, which can be a little confusing when you are new, so to get out of that I’m going to hit escape, that will get rid of my text, so what I want to do is, either have something else selected, like the nav bar, OK - that’s the nav bar selected - or just type the type lower, and move it in when you are finished.

What I’m going to do is just have the overall artboard selected, and that will let me type anywhere using the square cursor, and I’m going to show you two ways of applying text. One is an expandable text box, and one is a fixed width. Now expandable means that I can type something, and you’ll see that it keeps on going forever. OK, it will keep stretching off to the right there. Now another way of doing it - I’m going to hit escape on my keyboard - it gets rid of that text, - is to hit hold and drag a bit of text. What that means it is fixed with. That means that when I get to the edge, it will break on to two lines or as many lines that will fit. OK, so that’s the two boxes we’re going to use when we’re working with photoshop. The first one we’re going to do is - I’m going to hit escape again. I’m going to click once, and I’m going to type in our logo. It’s going to be capital BYOL, and I’m going to move it using the move tool to go into the nav bar here, If you’re finding it hidden, or you can’t see it, it’s probably because it’s on a lower layer. To move the layers, you click hold, and drag it above where you need it to be. To change the font, it’s nice and easy. Make sure you’re on the type tool, make sure you’re on the type layer, and play around with the fonts in here. Now if yours is not set to pixels, and is set to points, you might need to go and change that in your preferences, which is in an earlier video.

OK, so there’s two ways of doing it. You can use the drop down, OK, and pick some of these sizes. Now what I find quite useful, is actually dragging this one here, - can you see if I hover above this icon here, click it, drag it right or left, you can see the font changes, depending on where you’re dragging. Right to go higher, and left to go lower. Right, let’s say I’m going to pick 40 for the moment. You can type it in, so let’s say I pick 40 pixels for the moment, and I’m going to use the move tool, and move it in here.

To change the colour of the text, I’m going to make sure that I’m on my type tool, I’ll make sure I’m on my layer I’ve got selected is my type layer, and up here is where the font colour is.

Now I’ll click this, and I’m going to click hold, and drag this around to pick the colour I want. I want white, so I’m going to drag it all the way into the top left corner. Can you see I’ve dragged it past where it needs to go, so it gets all jammed up in the corner there. It’s definitely set to white everywhere, and click OK. If you want to use one of your special swatches, what you do is, you click on this, and over here you can see the eyedropper appears, OK, and he will pick the colour that you need from the swatches, I’m going to go back and pick white, and click OK