Last week I showed you how you to create a whimsical title using letter cut outs. That post made me a bit nostalgic for some old-time typography. While this post is not so much about a title as it is about typography, I am going to reintroduce you to another fun approach to a title.

By looking at the featured image at the top of this post you may already be guessing what old typography I’ll be discussing today 😉 But first I want to give you a brief backstory behind what drove this particular post.

Way back in the last century I grew up watching detective shows on television. Whether at my grandparents’ or my house…they seemed to be a staple. Shows like Adam 12, Dragnet, Mannix, Mission Impossible, Hawaii Five-O, The Fugitive. Ahhh…the good old days!

But one of my all-time favorites was The F.B.I. And I’m talking about the original! Most Sunday’s we’d have dinner at my paternal grandparents’ house and Grandpa ALWAYS had to watch The F.B.I. And if we were at home my father had to have it on! I have very fond memories of watching Efrem Zimbalist Jr. trying to defend the American government from unidentified threats. To this day I still gravitate toward these types of shows. Admittedly, I am a self-proclaimed crime scene junkie!

From those nostalgic crime drama shows, to today’s chilling chapters of true crime sagas and suspenseful scenes of Hollywood thrillers, there’s a unique and intriguing form of communication that has captivated us over the decades — the ransom note.

Working on all those letter cut outs last week made me reminiscent of that particular typography. Ergo, this post!

Ransom Note

While ransom notes have been used for centuries, the ransom letter typography – a unique style crafted from cut-out magazine and newspaper letters, made its mark a little later. This form of message was used by criminals to communicate anonymously, effectively avoiding handwriting analysis that could lead to their identification.

The magazine cut-out letters, often varying in typefaces, lent a peculiar disjointed aesthetic to these notes. This was not only striking visually but also served a practical purpose: it rendered the author untraceable, adding an additional layer of mystery and fear to the crime at hand.

Fast forward to today, and the unique visual aesthetic of vintage magazine letters is readily accessible to anyone with a digital device. The emergence of ransom note generators has made it easier than ever for artists, designers, and enthusiasts to tap into this history-rich style.

One such generator is available at Ransomizer, a digital platform that provides a quick and easy way to generate your own ransom-style notes digitally. In just a few clicks, you can create authentic looking ransom notes, fusing the old-world charm of vintage typography with modern technology.

Years ago (too many to mention), there used to be a lot of digital ransom alphabets available. Today there are only a few that can be found at some digital scrapbooking shops like Oscraps and Katie Pertiet Designs.

Today I thought it would be fun to take what I demonstrated for you last week and show you how to create the ransom look yourself…

Creating Ransom Letters

With this technique I won’t actually be cutting letters out of a paper strip. But I will be cutting different shaped letter bases from a paper strip. Hopefully, this will be fun and a little easier than everything I did last week 😉 And I will apologize in advance for the length of this post. But just as last week…it’s due largely to the number of illustrative images!

And once again, I highly recommend that you don’t attempt this technique on an actual layout. I just think it’s a good idea to start with a separate 12×12 file. It gives me plenty of room and I can make my title fairly large and move things around if I need more space. I can always re-size things if it’s too large when I move it to my layout.

Another little reminder, I use Photoshop Elements (PSE) 2024. If you use a different version, some of my screen shots may not look the same as what you see on your screen.

There aren’t too many ready-made ransom alphas available anymore. Thankfully, as you can see by the image directly above, there are more than a few free fonts that would be good candidates for this technique. While that image above may be hard to read, each of those fonts is listed (in the same order) below:

All but two of these (DJB Ransom Note and Ransom Note) are available at 1001Fonts. But you can just click on any of the font names above and go to the font’s download site.

I’m particularly fond of “Kingthings Extortion” (already active on my system) so I’ll be using that font for my examples. If you’re going to be following along, you can use any font that you like. And it doesn’t have to be a ransom font 😉

I’ve created a 12×12 file with a white base layer (Layer 1). And I’m going to ensure that my Foreground and Background color chips are set to the default of Black and White (press D):

Then I select the Horizontal Type tool:

In the Tool Options, I’ve selected the Kingthings Extortion font, set the Size to 100, the Leading to Auto and the Tracking to 600. I set the Tracking extremely high this time so I’m certain to have plenty of space between each letter. Then I set the alignment to Left Align Text and ensure that the Anti-aliasing box is checked.

Next, I place my cursor about a third of the way down the page and a little bit left of the edge. The I type my word using all lowercase letters:

Then I place my cursor about a third of the way up from the bottom of the page and a little bit left of the edge and I type the same word, this time using all uppercase letters:

And no, I’m not confused. The top word was typed using all lowercase letters and the bottom word was in fact typed using all uppercase letters. I know it doesn’t appear to be the case but it’s true!

Most, if not all of the “ransom” type fonts, will have different representations of the letter depending on whether you type in upper vs. lower case letters. This is true even if the font’s letters are all uppercase. I just wanted you to see how this particular font looks in both upper and lower case.

Note: Most often I am creating a word or words for a title. So, I leave my text on a single layer. Just as I did for the examples above. In general, I won’t do anything more than recolor a letter or two for a project. That’s easy enough to do by selecting a given letter and recoloring only that letter. And If I want to do something more than recolor a letter (add a layer style or clip paper) it’s simple enough to put the letter(s) on its own layer later. If you want to start out by keeping each of your letters on their own layer for more flexibility, that’s fine. Just be sure to leave a lot of space between the letters as you put them on the base.

Create The Paper Strip

Now it’s time to create the paper strip that I’ll use as the base behind the letters. First, I’m going to change my Foreground color chip to a very bright red (#ff0000).

Then I grab the Rectangular Shape tool:

I’ve set the “geometry option” to Unconstrained because I want that paper strip to be fairly large (top to bottom). I also ensure that From Center and Snap are both unchecked.

With the white layer (Layer 1) active, I just click and drag the rectangle to the desired size under my topmost word:

Since I know I’m going to be editing this rectangle later, I immediately simplify the layer and rename it to Lowercase Strip.

Now, I’m going to change my Foreground color chip to a very bright yellow (#fff600). I bet you think I’m going to drag out another rectangle, right? Actually, at this point it’s just easier to duplicate the Lowercase strip, reposition it and recolor it:

I renamed the duplicate to Uppercase Strip. Within the Layers Panel I have positioned the Lowercase Strip directly beneath the all-lowercase text (top word) and the Uppercase Strip directly beneath the all-uppercase text (bottom word).

Moving forward, there are two options that can be taken.

#1 – I can leave the words exactly as they are or #2 – I can use only the actual letter “shapes”, similar to how I created the Solid Letter Shapes in last week’s post. Either option will work but I generally use the actual letter shapes since I’m going to create my own background pieces.

If you’re following along, it’s perfectly fine for you to choose either option. Just know that if you choose option 1, your results in the next step could be dramatically different than mine.

Create Letter Shapes

The first thing I need to do is reset my Foreground/Background color chips to the defaults (press D). Now, I’m going to activate the lowercase word text layer in the Layers Panel. Then, just as last week…I select the Magic Wand tool:

In the Tool Options, I click on the New Selection icon, set the Tolerance to 32, uncheck Sample All Layers, then check Contiguous and Anti-aliasing:

Then I click anywhere inside each one of the letters to make my selections. Then I activate the uppercase word text layer in the Layers Panel and do the same:

You should be able to see the marching ants. But did you notice that there are no marching ants around the lowercase “r” (which was actually typed as an uppercase letter) over the yellow strip? Yeah, there’s a little issue with that letter.

If you look closely, you should be able to see that the left edge of that letter is not completely outlined with black. Without that closed outline, I can’t use the Magic Wand. But I’ll show you a work around just as soon as I finish the selected letters.

Pay very close attention to what I’m about to do now. In the Layers Panel, I ensure that the uppercase text layer is still the active layer.

Then I click the Create a New Layer icon. I do this because at this point, there is nothing within that selection from which I can make a copy. And I want my letter shapes on their own layer!

PSE creates a blank layer (Layer 2 for me). Right now, that new layer should be the active layer. The marching ants should still be active.

Next, I’m going to flip my Foreground/Background color chips so that white is on top (press X). I can now press Alt+Backspace to fill the selection with the foreground color (white):

And all the letters (except that pesky lowercase “r”) are filled with white. Now I need to cancel the selection (Ctrl+D or ESC) so I can work around that lowercase “r”.

You may be thinking I can just use the Magic Wand tool to select the black area around that letter and then just invert the selection. I wish it were that easy.

Again, because the left side of that letter is not completely “outlined” I would end up with a selection around everything except the black surrounding the letters. So that’s not going to work.

There’s truly a fairly easy fix whenever I run into this issue. The first thing I do is duplicate the “offending” text layer, simplify the new layer and hide the original text layer.

With the text simplified I can treat it like any other image. I need to flip my Foreground/Background color chips so that black is back on top (press X). Next, I grab the Brush Tool and a hard round brush set to about 4 px with the Opacity set to 100%. Then I just brush along that left edge to close the gap so it looks something like this:

Now, with that duplicate of the text layer active, I can use the Magic Wand Tool (with the same settings shown earlier) and make a good selection inside that letter:

The duplicate text layer should still be the active layer. Then I once again click the Create a New Layer icon. PSE creates a blank layer (Layer 3 for me). Right now, that new layer is blank and should be the active layer. The marching ants around the letter should still be active.

Next, I’m going to flip my Foreground/Background color chips again so that white is on top (press X). I can now press Alt+Backspace to fill the selection with the foreground color (white):

Now, to make my life a little easier in the next step, in the layers Panel, I’m going to move Layer 3 (the white r) directly below Layer 2 (all other white letters) and merge them together so all the letters are on one layer. I rename this merged layer to White Letters.

Cut Paper Shapes

I no longer need the original text layers so I hide those:

Look at all that space I have around each letter. This next part is going to be a breeze!

At the beginning of the “Creating Ransom Letters” section above I said I wasn’t going to be cutting out any letters. So, you may be wondering why I haven’t just merged the white letters with the paper strips.

Believe it or not, there is a method to my madness. I want to leave them separate because I don’t plan to leave them all white! More on that in a bit.

What I am going to do now is cut rectangles out of the paper strips around each of the letters, just as I did last week. I won’t bore you with all of the steps (and images). You can check last week’s post if you need a refresher on how to cut those out.

Here’s what I ended up with:

Now each rectangle is on its own layer which is exactly where I want them right now. Why? You may be asking. It’s simple.

I’m going to be making each of those rectangles into an irregular shape by cutting pieces away. If I had them merged together, I’d need to be very careful working around the other rectangles.

With them each on their own layer I don’t need to worry about cutting into one of the other rectangles.

So, let’s get irregular…

Irregular Cutting

If you think about the old “classic” ransom notes, the letters were cut out of magazines; often times in a haphazard manner. Therefore, the cut outs were seldom perfect rectangles. So, this next step is just an attempt to mimic that haphazard cutting.

Note: During this process it’s very important that I do NOT move the rectangle shapes from their current position. Well, maybe not critical, but it will cause an issue with how the white letters line up if they do get moved! Just keep that in mind if you’re following along!

I’m going to hide all of the paper pieces except for the first red one with the letter “R”. The first thing I’m going to do is make this huge rectangle smaller simply by making a few rectangular selections and deleting pieces until I’m happier with the size:

Then I zoom in as close as I can so I can get a better view of that new rectangle before I do any more cutting.

There are probably a lot of ways I could make this rectangle more irregular. For me, the easiest way I’ve found is to use a standard PSE square brush and delete sections in an irregular manner.

So, I select the Eraser Tool. In the Eraser tool options, I click the down arrow next to the current brush. PSE opens the list of brushes I have installed on my system. I just scroll down until I see Square Brushes and I select that set:

In most cases, I start out using a medium-sized brush when I’m making these erasures. I don’t want the new edges to look too jagged. So, I set the brush Size to 18 px, the Opacity to 100% and ensure that the Type is set to Brush:

Note: If the original rectangles you created are significantly smaller than the ones I’ve created (roughly 1.75″ wide x 4.5″ high), you may need to use a smaller brush size. You’ll be able to tell when your brush size is too large if the edges start to look jagged.

Because of the settings I use for cursors in PSE, when I go to position my cursor over the red rectangle, I see a square box with cross-hairs in the middle:

This cursor comes in very handy when trying to start/end on the corner of an image. So, I position the cursor so that the center of that square is directly over the top left corner of the red rectangle like this:

I click once. Then holding the Shift key down, I position the cursor at some random point on the right edge of the rectangle, ensuring that the bottom left corner of the cursor is outside the red rectangle like this:

Note: For the three images directly above, I made the cursor bigger than the actual brush size I’m using so you could hopefully see it a little better. For the rest of the images working on this rectangle, if a cursor is visible, it will be shown at the normal size.

I just click again and here’s the diagonal erasure:

I just repeat this process in a few other locations until I’m happy with the shape I’ve “outlined:

Now it’s just a simple matter of using the Magic Wand Tool to select and delete the three extraneous shapes so I end up with this:

That should seem fairly straightforward and easy…at least, I hope it was. I’m going to go on and “cut” the rest of the rectangles and just show you one final image:

There is absolutely no rhyme or reason for how I made these cuts…all just totally random. And that’s the fun part of it! And I could have left some of those more rectangular than I did. Nothing says all the letters have to be on irregular shapes 😉

And here’s what it looks like if I recolor the white letters to black:

Time to “dress up” those irregular shapes a bit…

Enhancing Shapes & Letters

With the shapes cut out I can now go about dressing them up. I can do this a multitude of ways; from simply recoloring or clipping papers all the way to using filters. Don’t worry, I’m not going to give you a multitude of examples. Just some highlights. At some point, you just need to experiment on your own 😉 and for this last step I’m only going to be working with the red shapes!

If you choose to do this, just look at the featured image at the top of this post, it can be a good starting point. It certainly should help you get even more creative ideas!

To start I thought I’d give a halftone effect to the shape for the letter “R”. I’m going to start by creating a gradient layer above that shape. To do this I create a new layer above the shape layer and name the new layer Gradient Layer.

I set my Foreground color chip to the same color of red as the shape (#ff0000) and leave the Background color chip set to white. Then I select the Gradient Tool:

I click the down arrow along the right side of the area marked Gradient and PSE opens the Gradient Picker. I select the Simple gradient option and the red gradient:

With the Red Simple Gradient selected, I leave Mode at Normal, Opacity at 100%, Reverse unchecked, Transparency and Dither both checked and I select Radial as the gradient style.

Then I click edit so I can ensure that the gradient will start with red and end with white. PSE then opens the Gradient Editor:

The only thing I change here is to set the left Color Stop to the same red as my Foreground color chip and the right Color Stop to white. Then I click OK to confirm.

Ensuring that the Gradient Layer is active, I just position my cursor above the top of the shape that is underneath the letter “R” and drag a line straight down to below the bottom of the shape. PSE then creates the red gradient:

I then clip that Gradient Layer to the shape:

With the Gradient Layer still active I go to the top tool bar and select Filter->Pixelate->Color Halftone:

PSE opens the Color Halftone settings Dialog box:

I make no changes to what I believe may be default settings and click OK to confirm. And here is my gradient halftone:

Note: If I was going to change any of the Color Halftone settings, it would be only to the Max. Radius setting (in my case it was set to 8px – presumed the default). I could make that a bit larger. But for this small of an image, I would recommend nothing much higher than perhaps 10.

I’m going to keep the letter itself colored black. Now I’m just going to apply a shadow (on its own layer) and warp it so it appears the shape is lifted off the paper:

Note: If you need pointers on placing a shadow on its own layer and warping it, please refer back to my “Stitching Realism” post from August of 2024.

I’m going to keep the rest of this super simple…I promise!

For the letter “A”:

I re-sized and clipped a paper from “Colorful Grunge Backgrounds” by mfreem at Creative Fabrica to the shape under the letter. I also recolored the letter to a medium yellow color (#f5c906). I then added a simple drop shadow to the shape.

For the letter “n”:

I re-sized and clipped a paper from “Grunge Yellow Fabric Texture” by Pattern Universe at Creative Fabrica to the shape under the letter. I also recolored the letter to the same red color I used for the original rectangles (#ff0000). I then added a simple drop shadow to the shape.

For the letter “S”:

I simply recolored the shape under the letter to a pale olive color (#8d9c7d) and added a grunge overlay from my stash. I also added a torn edge to the shape. I re-sized and clipped a burlap scrap from “36 Burlap Backgrounds” by oldmarketdesigns at Creative Fabrica to the letter itself. I then added a simple drop shadow to the shape.

For the letter “o”:

I re-sized and clipped a paper from “Colorful Grunge Backgrounds” by Digital Paper Packs at Creative Fabrica to the shape under the letter. I left the letter itself colored black. I then added a simple drop shadow to the shape.

For the letter “M”:

I re-sized and clipped a paper from “Newspaper Patchwork Collage” by giraffecreativestudio at Creative Fabrica to the shape under the letter. I also recolored the letter to a medium blue color (#086486) and added a mustard yellow outer glow (#fbbb01) to help it stand out a bit. I then added a simple drop shadow to the shape.

Note: For the letter “S” above I mentioned that I added a torn edge. If you need any pointers on how to add a torn edge please refer back to my “Torn Paper” post from October 2023.

Once you have your word/letters created you can do the same thing I did last week. In the layers Panel, just activate all the pertinent layers and click on the Create a new group icon at the top of the Layers Pane (looks like a stack of papers). Then name the group based on the word. With your actual layout file open, just “drag” that group (which should look like a single layer at this point) into the layout file.

You could just as easily save the completed word as a PNG file if that would be easier. I would recommend that you not apply shadows if you’re going to save your work as a PNG. I’m a big proponent of not shadowing something unless I know what lighting angle will be used in a layout.

Extra Tips

First and foremost, this technique is not exclusive to a “ransom note” effect. You can take what you’ve learned about creating irregular shapes and make titles similar to those I showed you last week.

And you don’t have to be creating a title. You could just create a ransom alphabet of your own. If you should decide to do that, I would highly recommend that you keep the alphabet as both a PSD and a PNG file. With the PSD file you would have the flexibility to create alternate versions of the alphabet.

This technique is more about thinking outside the box than creating a ransom note look! Just let your creative juices flow. You’ll be amazed at what you can come up with 😊

You certainly don’t have to use any of the “ransom” fonts I listed above. It is entirely possible to use a mix of whatever fonts (upper and lowercase) that you have on hand. The ransom fonts just add some extra grunge to the letters.

If you do use one of the “ransom” fonts listed above, it is not a requirement to isolate only the letter the way I demonstrated. It certainly can be equally as much fun to use the text letters “as is”.

If you think you’ll want to recolor or clip papers to text letters, just be sure to type each letter individually (on its own layer). Otherwise, you’d have to simplify the “word” and separate the letters.

You can and should experiment on your own with other ways to enhance the look of the irregular shapes. Try different filters, coloring techniques (like a gradient), layer styles…even glitter if you like. It’s your project so you can do whatever you like.

If you save words or letters as PNG files, I would highly recommend that you not apply any shadows at that point. I’m a firm believer in not applying shadows until an element is on the actual layout!

Whatever you decide to do with your fonts and shapes…just have fun with them!

Thanks for reading this week’s Tuesday Tip. Remember, if you have any suggestions or questions please don’t hesitate to “Message Me“. Check back next week for another interesting title option. Click “Follow Me” to stay in touch. I hope you have a wonderful week!