As you can see, there are indeed ways to make text "pretty" using TeX
and friends but they are definitely not easy. (This is actually one of the reasons why my WordArt-loving colleagues find it hard to switch to LaTeX
. I, however, no longer use them due to my own opinions about WordArt:) As mentioned in the comments above, you can use graphical packages like tikz
and pstricks
.
A very nice pstricks
example has already been provided by azetina but if you want to broaden your horizon, here are some posts in tex.stack
that might help you.
And here are some modified examples from the pgf
manual.
Code
%https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/85863/is-there-is-a-package-so-you-can-add-text-with-visual-effects-like-wordart-fro
\documentclass[10pt]{article}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{fadings,decorations.text}
\begin{document}
% First figure
\noindent
\begin{tikzfadingfrompicture}[name=tikz]
\node [text=transparent!20]
{\fontfamily{ptm}\fontsize{45}{45}\bfseries\selectfont Ti\emph{k}Z};
\end{tikzfadingfrompicture}
\begin{tikzpicture}
\shade[path fading=tikz,fit fading=false,
left color=blue,right color=black]
(-2,-1) rectangle (2,1);
\end{tikzpicture}
% Second figure
\begin{tikzpicture}
\path [decorate, decoration={text along path,text format delimiters={[}{]},text align=fit to path,
text={A big [\color{red}]red[] and [\color{green}]green[] apple.}}]
(0,0) .. controls (0,2) and (3,2) .. (3,0);
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}
Output


Here is my attempt at creating a WordArt-like command. You can tweak it so that you can also control the xshift
and yshift
.
\documentclass[10pt]{article}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{fadings,decorations.text}
\newcommand{\winarty}[5]{
\begin{tikzpicture}
\draw [xshift=2.5pt,yshift=-2pt,decorate, decoration={text along path,text format delimiters={[}{]},text align=fit to path,
text={[\fontsize{45}{45}\bfseries\color{#4}\selectfont]#5[]}},]
(#1,0) .. controls (#1,0.75) and (#2,-0.75) .. (#2,0.5);
\path [decorate, decoration={text along path,text format delimiters={[}{]},text align=fit to path,
text={[\fontsize{45}{45}\bfseries\color{#3}\selectfont]#5[]}},]
(#1,0) .. controls (#1,0.75) and (#2,-0.75) .. (#2,0.5);
\end{tikzpicture}
}
\begin{document}
\def\Exampletext{This is an example text.}
\winarty{1}{12}{blue!75!black}{gray}{\Exampletext}
\end{document}
Here is the output.

TikZ
– Jörg Dec 6 '12 at 23:18