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up vote 12 down vote favorite
4

Would it be feasible to try to reproduce something like the image below in TeX? I just wanted to ask the advice of some experts before I invested too much time trying.

I've already messed around with \raise and \lower, but I can't get the lines to overlap.

For horizontally stretching the font I've used \resizebox of the package graphicx. Maybe there are better ways?

Btw, the example below was made using Inkscape and is suppose to be read as 'Lorem of Ipsum and Dolor'.

Example of desired result

P.S: I'm not sure which tags to use, so feel free to add or change them.

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3  
If I were to do this, I would probably use LaTeX and TikZ; not just amongst LaTeX tools, I would use them instead of Inkscape. The advantages for me would be that I know them but don't know Inkscape, and that I could program the diagram. But to program it, I would have to have certain "rules" that I wanted it to obey, and those would probably involve knowing a lot more about the shapes of the letters than I currently do! (This is why I'm commenting instead of answering.) The current solutions don't fit that: they treat the letters too much like boxes and not like letters. – Andrew Stacey Mar 21 '12 at 10:18
(That's not to say that they aren't good answers, but they aren't ones that I would look at generalising if I were trying to do this on any sort of bigger scale.) – Andrew Stacey Mar 21 '12 at 10:18
Could you try to come up with a more precise title? Imho, WordArt is something quite different (see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wordart#WordArt). Perhaps Making specific letters go into other lines? – doncherry Mar 21 '12 at 10:37
@AndrewStacey Definitely, I think we all tried to reproduce the picture, but a "good" answer would need to come from a typographer or a graphic designer, who probably would not have arranged the text this way in the first place. There is obviously more to it than just stretching words or letters so the lines are the same length – which, as in the original picture, gives a rather distorted text. However, (smaller) stretches and hooks are obviously part of what a designer would need to do in order to produce this kind of effect, while handling the letters and words with more care. – ienissei Mar 21 '12 at 11:09
1  
Thanks, I was more interested in which techniques could be used to obtain this effect, then in this specific example (as you might have guessed). The example was mocked up in less than 2 minutes, so it is indeed just some letters handled as boxes instead of a more typographical approach. Thanks for the answers. I think the TikZ example is the easiest (or at least easiest to read afterwards) way to go. – nvcleemp Mar 21 '12 at 12:33

3 Answers

up vote 20 down vote accepted

You could do something like that in TikZ with a little trial and error, but personally, I think Inkscape is a the better tool for this.

\documentclass[border=2mm]{standalone}

\usepackage{tikz}

\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}[inner sep=0pt,outer sep=0pt]
\node (L) {L};
\node (orem) at (L.north east) [scale=0.85,xshift=-0.3em,anchor=north west] {orem};
\node (of) at (L.south west) [gray,yshift=-0.1ex,scale=0.65,anchor=north west] {of};
\node (I) at (of.base east) [xshift=0.1em,anchor=base west] {I};
\node (psum) at (I.north east) [scale=0.525,anchor=north west] {psum};
\node (and) at (I.south east) [gray,yscale=0.5,xscale=0.775,anchor=south west] {and};
\node (Dolor) at (of.south west) [scale=0.9,yshift=-0.1ex,anchor=north west] {Dolor};
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}
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You should shift the "o" of "Lorem" to the left. – Andrew Stacey Mar 21 '12 at 10:19
@AndrewStacey: The "o" has been shifted. – Jake Mar 21 '12 at 10:48
up vote 15 down vote

It can be done with LaTeX, but requires a lot of trial and error – for this kind of things, you would be better of using a design software and importing an image.

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{xcolor}

\begin{document}

\raisebox{-2ex}{\huge L}\kern-.5em\raisebox{-.1ex}{\Large\kern.1em o\kern.1em r\kern.1em e\kern.1em m}

\hskip.25em{\color{gray}of}%
\kern.15em\raisebox{-.7ex}[-2ex]{\Huge I}\raisebox{2.2ex}[-2.2ex]{\small\kern.03em p\kern.03em s\kern.03em u\kern.03em m}%
\llap{\large\color{gray}\kern.1em a\kern.1em n\kern.1em d}

\raisebox{0ex}[1ex]{\Large \kern.13em D\kern.13em o\kern.13em l\kern.13em o\kern.13em r}

\end{document}

enter image description here

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Definite vote for getting the "o" of "Lorem" correctly placed! – Andrew Stacey Mar 21 '12 at 10:20
up vote 5 down vote

You can take an approach similar to the one used to draw the LaTeX and TeX logos.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{xcolor,graphicx}
\begin{document}
\scalebox{2}{\vbox{{\bfseries {\Huge L}\raisebox{10pt}{\Large orem}}\vskip0pt
\vspace*{-6pt}{{\bfseries{\Large \textcolor{gray}{of}} {\Huge I}\raisebox{10pt}{\Large psum}\hspace{-32pt}{\Large \textcolor{gray}{and}}}}}}
\end{document}

enter image description here

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