How to Make Text Icons

If you’re bored of the standard comic faces, sports logos or animal symbols used as icons and avatars in online gaming, message boards, chat windows and even on your own computer’s desktop and toolbars, you can make your own icons out of text. Use words as graphic symbols to really stand out on the Internet or to streamline your own workflow on the computer. Instead of seeing your desktop filled with little pictures with words underneath them, you can use text as the pictures themselves, using a simple drawing program called Microsoft Paint, included with your computer.

Things You'll Need

• Microsoft Paint

Instructions

1. Open Paint and click “Image,” then choose “Attributes.” Most icon file sizes are very small, such as 48-by-48 pixels, so set your dimensions and click the “OK” button. If you don’t mind your icon taking up more room on your computer screen, choose a larger size. However, be aware that icons used in gaming and messenger windows may be automatically sized and may appear smooshed if their dimensions are too large.

2. Click the “Image” menu again and uncheck the “Draw Opaque” option. If there is no checkmark next to “Draw Opaque,” leave it as it is. This allows you to have a transparent background for your text icon instead of a white box around it. The white box will still appear on the screen, as Paint doesn’t have the capability to render on-screen transparency.

3. Click “View,” then select “Zoom,” then “Custom” and choose “800%.” Your icon size isn’t enlarged, you just have more room on the screen to draw. Click the “OK” button.

4. Click the “Pencil” tool and choose a paint color from the “Color Picker” at the bottom of the screen. Use your mouse to click, drag and draw the text for the icon, such as “File,” “Games,” “Stop” or your name.

5. Click “File,” then click “Save As.” Name the icon the same as the text you just drew, then choose “GIF” for the “Save as type.” If you don’t want the icon to have a transparent background, you may choose any “Save as type.” Save the file to your computer.

6. Open a new file and set the same dimensions. Click the “Text” tool, which looks like a capital “A.” Choose a paint color, then click your cursor in the white box. A toolbar appears, choose a font style and size, then type the icon text.

7. Click “File,” then click “Save As.” Name the icon the same as the text you just typed, then choose “GIF” for the “Save as type.” (Or your preferred extension.) Save the file to your computer.

Tips & Warnings

• You can make text icons in other programs, too. Both Microsoft Word and Microsoft Publisher (Word is included in all installations of the Microsoft Office Suite, Microsoft Publisher may be, depending on your version) allow the sizing and text required for icons. Neither will permit transparent backgrounds, so your text will appear on a white box. Photoshop, a graphics program available through the Adobe Creative Suite, permits transparent backgrounds—when you open the program, just click “File,” then “New” and be sure to click the “Transparent” background button on the page setup screen, then save the file as a “GIF.”

References

• MSDN: Creating Windows Icons
• Microsoft: Using Paint