After importing my type into Photoshop and cutting out the spaces in the letters that I wanted to get rid of, I had to choose an image to go behind the font. I wanted to do this to make the type stand out more and I felt that it looked a little plain with just the standalone letters, although this could have worked by itself.

I deleted the blank spaces by opening the image up in Photoshop.

 

Then created a rectangular marquee and filled it with white paint and moved it so it was underneath the font.

 

I then cut out the parts that I didn’t want by selecting them with the magic wand tool and then deleting them from the white layer.

I could then put any image behind these layers and it would show through and be the background of the lettering.

 

Originally, I had my lowercase letters with the diamonds still in the letters so I played around with a few background images for these, which to start with I thought would be my final version.

This definitely suits the idea of a circus theme with the stripes and the diamonds. However, I am not sure whether it is too much and if the diamonds are distracting. I think that the diamonds look good on the ‘s’ as it fills up the space between and makes it unique. However, I am not a big fan of it on the other letters.

I also looked at the same sort of idea for my uppercase letters. Although the uppercase version looks okay, I definitely preferred it on the lowercase version.

I liked having the stripes all go to a point in the middle of the letters and I found as I was moving the background image into position it created an interesting effect on the letters. I took a video of this to show this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUEtZybd5V8&feature=youtu.be

Although I found this interesting, I didn’t know how or if would be able to incorporate this into my final designs.

I also wasn’t sure on the diamonds in the lowercase letters so I took them out and tried again without them.

As I originally looked at circus themed images as the circus was my first inspiration for this typography. I tried to find images of circus related things to put behind such as elephants, diamonds and big tops. Below are a few images.

 

I felt that it was very difficult to find a circus related image that would sit well behind the white background and still make sense. After looking at images of the circus for a while, I found that red and white stripes are a common trait in the circus and thought that it would look good behind the lettering and work well.

This is my favourite so far that I have done as I think that the stripes work well behind the white. However, I am not sure whether they completely relate to the circus, but I still have no decided what my type would be used for so this may not matter.

As I was unsure what I wanted my font to be used for I went back to looking at playing cards and the pattern used on the back of them. I thought that this may look good behind the white.

Unfortunately this did not look as good as I thought it might, as I still think that it is a little difficult to understand what it is behind.

I then went back to my original circus idea but tried to look for a more modern angle on the circus. I found an image of some diamonds, which relates to the circus, that I found interesting and had a modern twist to them.

 

I also tried out just having a plain background colour.

I did like this but I think that it would be best used for just body text and not necessarily as header lettering.

My favourite was the more modern diamond image background and I think that this will be the one that I use in my final designs.