How to Create a Distressed Painted Wall Text Effect in InDesign

This quick and simple text effect will transport you to the colorful streets of Mexico. It's easy to put together using Adobe InDesign, and you can adapt the text to suit your own purposes. Why not try using this effect for street food or restaurant branding?

Suitable for beginners to InDesign, this is a good all-round introduction to some of the basic tools and panels in InDesign. You can also watch a video tutorial:

What You’ll Need to Create Text Effects in InDesign

We’ll put together the text effect in Adobe InDesign, but you’ll also need access to vector software like Adobe Illustrator for quickly editing the paint splash graphic we’re going to use in the design.

You’ll also need to download some of the following items from Envato Elements:

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The fonts used for this InDesign text effects tutorial have expired. But here are some Mexican fonts you can use to follow this tutorial.

Let's get started with this InDesign distressed effect tutorial!

What You Will Learn

How to Create a Brick Backdrop for Your Text
How to Add Type to Your Design
How to Add a Splash of Paint to Your Text Effects in InDesign
Awesome Work—You're Done!
5 Cool Text Effects for Photoshop (From Envato Elements)
Discover More Tutorials on Envato Tuts+

1. How to Create a Brick Backdrop for Your Text

Step 1

The first thing to do in this distressed effect tutorial is to open InDesign and go to File > New > Document. You can create your text effect on any page size, but here I’m going to set it up on a single A3 Landscape page. Click Create once you’ve set your page size.

Expand the Layers panel (Window > Layers) and double-click on Layer 1, renaming the layer Wall.

Create two more new layers, naming them Paint and, at the top, Type.

Then lock both the Type and Paint layers, and click on Wall to activate it.

Step 2

Expand the Swatches panel (Window > Color > Swatches), and choose New Color Swatch from the panel’s main menu.

Name the swatch Mustard and set the levels to C=7 M=22 Y=83 K=0. Click Add and Done.

Repeat to create four more new swatches, with the following names and CMYK levels:

Red: C=0 M=84 Y=77 K=0
Off-White: C=4 M=4 Y=2 K=0
Stone: C=10 M=12 Y=32 K=0
Green: C=83 M=30 Y=89 K=17

Step 3

Working on the Wall layer, select the Rectangle Frame Tool (F) and drag across the page. File > Place, navigate to the brick wall photo, and Open, allowing it to fill the frame.

With the image frame selected, head up to Object > Effects > Transparency. Bring the Opacity down to 75% and click OK.

Step 4

Use the Rectangle Tool (M) to create a shape across the page, extending the right and left edges outwards by about a quarter-page width.

From the Swatches panel, set the Fill Color of the shape to Stone.

With the shape selected, go to Object > Effects > Transparency, as before. Set the Mode to Multiply and the Opacity to 55%.

Click on Gradient Feather at the bottom of the Effects window’s left-hand menu. Set the Type to Radial, allowing the gradient to become more transparent towards the center of the shape.

Then click OK to exit the window.