The four bending types

The application offers four types of word bending. Each of them is shown in the picture below. From left to right: circular, wave, parabolic and crossword. Each of the types has a couple of controls for defining the basline curve. The word that is shown in the window is the longest word that was found in the text file.

The following controls are available:

• 'Curvature': this sets the initial curvature of the entire word. Per bending type the curvature will act differently, but basically it's the same for all the types.
• 'Angle': this sets the starting angle of each word. It's not the same setting as the angle in the 'Shape' window (press the 'Shape' button to show the pop-up window). It's the initial word direction it will start to bend.
• 'Kerning': the distance between each character can be adjusted. In some cases the characters of the word are 'bended' together, showing an overlap of each character. The kerning will counteract this effect. It is recommended to be modest with this value (see example below) it may result in hard to read words in the final wordlet. On the other hand, it may also create a playful and artistic affect when word can cross each other by leaving space between characters.
• The edit box shows the word that is used for the settings. This is the longest word in the text file, but you can type any other text if you want. There must be a minimum length of 12 characters to show a decent effect. In case too little characters are found, it will add white spaces at the end to complete the bending path correctly.
• 'Activate the character bending' will override the settings in the 'Shape' window for position and angle.

Picture above: example of kerning. From left to right the kerning value increases (here from -100 to +28).

How to work with bending words

In most cases the bending effect is self-explaining. A couple of good practices though may be useful.

• Play with these settings controls before you hit the 'Start' button. The effect may not be outspoken enough because you may have too many short words. Since the start of each word is more or less preset, and do not differ very much for each of the four types, you may need to use a more extreme angle of curvature to show the effect. In many cases there are not that many long words to fully utilize the full length of the bending path.
• Start with a small value of kerning. Good practice show that the tighter the characters are positioned; the better the overall effect appears to be. It may even appear that individual characters of each word are overlapping. In that case adjust the kerning just a little bit.
• The bending effect is heavily dependent on the font. Some fonts have a character set of almost of equal size (like 'Heather Thomas' and 'Logoblogo'), while most others are strongly kerned (the 'i' takes less space than the 'm'). The kerning and bending effect is completely different. It allows for great artistic effects.
• In many cases the mask has a certain direction. To maximize the effect of a bended word the direction of the bend (set with the 'Curvature' value) may be important. In many cases this will not only fill the mask better, but also give a much better visual effect.

Examples

Picture below: effect of a 'start-up' and 'start-down' initial direction for the parabolic bending. Because of the diagonal guitar mask the effect of the curvature is outspoken different. Left: curvature downward, right: curvature upward.

Picture below: effect of the starting angle for the 'Circular' bending. The initial value of each bended word is set in the 'Shape' window. This is not the same angle as in the bending options! Left: no angle (always starting in the same horizontal direction), right: starting angle of 45 degrees (starting clockwise and anticlockwise). This effect is comparable with non-bended words where a random orientation is selected of the indicated angle (so: 45 degrees mean randomly selecting 45 and -45 degrees).

Picture below: influence of the font type on the effect of a crossword bending type (technically, this is not word bending). It clearly shows that crossword bending effect is not predictable. And it's a matter of taste which font suits the best. From left to right these fonts were used: Carmelia , Centabel Book and Heather Thomas.

Picture below: effect of kerning values on the placement of smaller words (for crossword type). From left to right: kerning = 35 and kerning = 150. As can be noted at large kerning values words can be put (in and) between characters easily.