How to Create Folded Paper Typography

(Click for the full size image)

First of all, we’ll need to step away from our computers and laptops to create real-life folded paper text in order to get the idea, and the model, for our Photoshop work.

This is where you’ll need to use your scissors.

Take a regular A4 sized paper and cut it into strips along its longer side. Fold the letters like you see in the picture. The letters D and E will need an extra piece of paper: D for the back side of the letter and for the middle arm of the E.
This is how the letters in the document should look like.

(Click for the full size image)

Setting the Photoshop document should go like this: create a blank document of 1200x600px. Use your Horizontal Type Tool and type Designs (or whatever word you need) like I did below. I’m using the Futura font, size 190. If you don’t have this font, you might consider some other similar fonts. There are plenty out there.

Next we want to add color to our letters. Here’s the screen with the colors that I used here:

(type the hexadecimal values in the color picker)

Next we’ll need to make some guides around the letter D. We’ll start by creating a new layer group “D”. Create a group “D” (Layer > New > Group), and within this group a new layer named “D” (Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + N). The guides that we want to insert should be positioned on top, on the bottom, on the right on the left and the inside-left side of the letter:

Let’s presume that all the strips of paper are the same size and width. This would mean that the constituent lines of D are the same width as the parts of the other letters. Therefore, we need to establish the unit of measure. Select the Rectangular Marquee Tool and make a perfect square selection (hold Shift while selecting) on the upper left corner of the letter “D”. Create a new layer, name it the measuring square, or something similar, and fill it with black (Edit > Fill > Black). The color of the box doesn’t actually matter; we just need to see it clearly when working on our letter colors. This square will help us make sure that everything is the same size.

Place another guide at the bottom of the square measure. Then move the square to the bottom right corner of the guides around D and place another guide on top of the black square and one on the left side of the square. You should come up with something like this after toggling the visibility of the box layer:

At this point, you should rasterize the original text layer. Right click on the layer in the palette and choose Rasterize Type. Having made all the guides we need, we are now going to select the layer D and make a selection (Rectangular Marquee Tool) around the letter, along the guides, and fill it with the same color as the letter. Then, we’ll need to select the “inner” rectangle of the letter and delete it. You should end up with a box with a hole in the middle.

Now, if you take a look at our paper creation from the beginning, you’ll see that we need to cut off the right side corners of the letter D. Probably the best thing to do this is by Polygonal Lasso Tool. Click on the corner of the top guide and the inner right guide, then click on the diagonally opposite corner and click around the letter to close the selection. You get the idea. Repeat the required procedure on the bottom right corner. And when your selection looks like below, hit Delete to clear the unwanted corners.

Since this should look like a letter made of folded paper, we might want o add some overlapping imperfections. We can do that by creating the selections as shown below and fill them with the same color as the letter itself. Use the Rectangular Marquee Tool and create a selection between the top two guides. Add to this selection a similar one between the two bottom guides:

So, that’s about all the work on the D for now.

Now for the letter E. First, we need to add some guides and make sure that all the arms and parts of the letter are the same size. We’ll use the measuring box again. But first, create a new group (Layer > New > Group), name it “E”. And within the group, create the Layer “E”. We can see that the arms of the letter are not wide enough so we need to insert some guides. The top and bottom arms should be as wide as to reach the guides already set by the letter D, so we’ll only need to make the guides for the middle arm.

Insert the guide on the left side of the letter and two guides on the right side. Then fill the required areas with the appropriate color, just like you did for the previous letter. At this point, you might want to save some time and add the same overlapping imperfection as for the letter D. Since you need to fill these selections with same color, you might as well do it all at once, adding the subsequent selections to the one you made first.

Then, select the original text layer and chop off the upper-left corner and the bottom-left corner. Just like we did with the letter D.

Now for the S. Create a new Group “S” and a new layer “S” within. We’re going to use the horizontal guides set by the E, and add two vertical guides: one at the left, and the other at the right side of the letter. Make a rectangular selection from the top guide to the bottom guide (the same guides as E), between the two new, vertical guides for S. Then subtract the thin bars from the selection so that you end up with three equal strips, same size as the hands of E. Fill the selection with the same color as the letter S. If this sounds confusing, take a look at the screen:

Then, bring up the measuring box and place it at the top left corner, then slide a guide to its right side. After that, move the box to the bottom right corner and slide a guide to its left.

Fill the areas between the arms as shown below.

Toggle the visibility of our original text layer and make a selection around the corners that you want to cut off with the Polygonal Marquee Tool. Then hit Delete.

Then turn back on the text layer and delete the S from it, since we no longer need it. Our S looks funny now, but, we’ll fix that later.

Now for the “I”. Take a break, and have some water, since we don’t need to do anything on this letter. We can get it on a separate layer, in a separate group just like the other layers. Make a new Group “I” with the layer “I” inside. Make a rectangular selection around the letter and fill it with the desired color. Then delete the letter from the original text layer using the rectangular selection and the Delete key.

Add a new Group “G” and a new layer “G” within. The same old drill you know by now. Add guides to the left and right of the letter. Then make a selection from top to bottom and left to right. Fill the selection with the color that you picked for this letter.

Then bring up the black box and move it to the top-left corner and slide a guide to the right of the box. Then move the box to the bottom-right corner and slide a guide to its left. Subtract a part between the inner guides so that you get a box similar to the one we got while shaping the letter D.

Move the measuring box’s top to the top of the inner circle and create a guide on the bottom of the box. Then make a selection as shown below and delete from the “G”. The original text layer is set to Invisible.

Now, we want to cut off the unwanted corners. The procedure is as it has been described before. You might notice that your G is a bit too wide compared to other letters. We can fix this by making a rough rectangular selection of a large portion of the right side of the letter. Select the Move Tool (V) on the Tools Panel, hold Shift and move the selection to the left.

There you go!

For our next letter, we need to repeat the drill: create a new group “N” and a layer “N” within that group. Add guides to the left and right of the letter. Make a rectangular selection covering the letter and fill it with the desired color. Then bring up the measuring box, place it in the top-left corner of the letter and add a guide on its right side, then place the box in the bottom-right corner and slide another guide to the left side of the black box. Make a selection of the middle of the letter and hit Delete, leaving only two vertical strips.

Then make a selection around one of the stems of the letter N and duplicate it into a new layer (Ctrl+J). Transform (Ctrl+T) the duplicate and experiment until you turn it into a crossbar for the letter. The right side of the crossbar should line up with the inside upper-left corner of the left stem, and the bottom left corner should go over the inside, bottom-left corner of the right stem. In other words, it should look like this:

Delete the unwanted part of the crossbar that goes above the top border using the Rectangular marquee tool. In order to make the angles on the top left side and the bottom right side of the N, we need to get the help once again from our measurement box. Bring up the box to the upper left corner again and hit Ctrl+T to transform it. You’ll need to slide a guide to the horizontal transform control of the box. Repeat the procedure for the bottom right corner. Then use the Polygonal Lasso Tool to make the angles:

That’s it for now! We just need to duplicate the letter S. Right-click on the Group S and select Duplicate Group. Rename the duplicate to S (2), and the layer within to S (2). Place it over the last letter and fill it with the same color as the last letter – brown in this case. Lastly, delete the letter from the original text layer.

Having finished creating folds on all the letters, we can now clean up the parts of our original text that we no longer need. Select the text layer and delete whatever you don’t need and haven’t deleted so far.

We should also get the letter E in one layer, since some parts are on the layer in the Group E, and some parts are still on the original text layer. We’ll do this by clicking on the original text layer in the layers palette (make sure you have deleted all the other letters from the original text layer before doing this) and move it to the group E. Then select the original text layer and the E layer and merge the two layers (right-click > Merge Layers). You now have all the letters is separate groups, on separate layers and a document looking like this:

Now we need to create realistic folds. For this we’ll need to refer to our real-life models, as well as the guides that we have already set.

If you look at the letter D, you’ll notice that the horizontal parts of the letter are the ones that are on top, so we’ll need to adjust the vertical parts. We are going to create some shadows by selecting the middle area with the Rectangular Marquee Tool and make a Black to Transparent gradient using the Gradient Tool (G). Experiment with the gradients until you get a satisfying result. If you are not pleased with the first result you get, hit Undo and try again.

With your selection ready, open the gradient menu and set it to Foreground to Transparent and set the sliders to something like this:

Then drag the gradient line like this:

You’ll need to delete the gradient in the middle of the letter and you’ll get something like this:

Repeat the gradient for the letter E, only without the right black cursor in the gradient menu. You’ll need to apply the gradient to the horizontal arms of the letter and to the overlapping part.

For the letter S, the curves are on top, so the horizontal parts are going to need the shadows. Repeat the gradient procedure until you’re happy with the results.

The letter “I” stays intact, and for the letter “G”, we need to apply shadows to the horizontal parts.
If you look at the letter N you’ll notice that the left stem is under the crossbar, and the crossbar is under the right stem. That’s exactly how you’re going to apply the shadows.

For the second letter S, repeat the procedure as for the first one.

Next, we need to desaturate the parts of the letters that are behind the other parts to give some depth to the letters. We’ll do this by selecting the underlying parts and changing the saturation and lightness. When you make the required selection, go to Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation and set the saturation to -40 and the lightness to +20. Repeat for all the other letters.

When you finish adjusting the saturation and lightness, you might end up with something like this:

Now you might want to apply the Satin Layer style. Select the Layer D and go to Layer > Layer Style > Satin, and set the parameters as shown below:

You need to apply this style to all the other letters. You can do this by copying and pasting the layer style from the layer D. Right-click on the D layer (the one that already has the style applied) and select Copy Layer Style. Then, right-click on another layer and select Paste Layer Style. Repeat this on all the letter layers.

Now, in order to add an aged look to our text, we’re going to apply a few simple, but effective steps. First of all, we’ll need to add a Gradient Map adjustment layer. Go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Gradient Map. From the Gradient Map menu, select a Yellow to Red gradient and check the Reverse box. Set the opacity of the Gradient Map layer to 15.

Having done this, add a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer. Go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Hue/Saturation. In the layer menu, drop the saturation to around -20.

Next, we’re going to create an uneven look on our text. Set your Foreground and background color to black and white. Create a new layer by pressing Ctrl+Shift+N, and keep it under the adjustment layers. Go to Filter > Render > Clouds, change the blending mode to Overlay and set the opacity to 50%.

Now, you can open a paper texture like this one

Or you can use a texture of your own. Once you open your texture, rotate it to fit your document and adjust Image > Image size > Width to 1200px, or to the value of the width of your document. Copy the texture and paste it to our document. Change the blending mode of this layer to Overlay and go to Image > Adjustment > Levels and set the following values:

Then Go to Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation and drop the saturation to around -40. Then drop the opacity of the layer to 50%.

Then, duplicate the texture layer (Ctrl+J) and place it under all the letter layers. Change the blending mode to Multiply and drop the opacity to 20%.

You can experiment with other, different textures, until you find the one that suits your needs.

At this point, I’m going to add a Vignette around the edges of the image in order to draw the attention of the viewers to the text. Create a new layer and name it Vignette. Select the Rectangular marquee tool and set the Feather to 50px. Click and drag a box around the entire image. Then invert your selection (Ctrl+Shift+I) and fill the selection with black (#000000). Change the blending mode of the Vignette to Overlay if you like.

Finally, use the Photoshop’s Ruler to rearrange the letters so that there is equal space between them. Furthermore, you might want to center the text to, so there’s another use for the ruler.

Lastly, I’d like to add some additional text to the image. I’ll do this with the Horizontal Type Tool. If you’re adding text, make sure to keep it under the adjustment layers and the original paper texture layer, as well as under the Clouds layer. I’ll be using the same font for this text as for the original text (Futura), but you might experiment with that. Also, you might want to paste the Satin Layer Style used before.

In this Photoshop tutorial, we successfully made some folded paper typography. We used simple marquee and lasso tools and a lot of guides. I hope you enjoyed it!

You can download the PSD file crated throughout this tutorial here:

FOLDED TYPOGRAPHY_www.addictivedesigns.net
(file size: 8.5 MB)

A tutorial by Bonifacio Cruz