7 examples of stunning CSS3 text effects

CSS3 has lots of nice effects, among many other things, to enhance the typography of your website.
In this article, I have compiled 7 extremely promising typography techniques done using CSS3.

How to Create Inset Typography with CSS3


Just two years ago, we all used Photoshop to create beautiful inset typography. Now, you can do it using only CSS3. This great tutorial will help you getting started.
View tutorial: http://sixrevisions.com/css/how-to-create-inset-typography-with-css3/

Create Beautiful CSS3 Typography


Technically speaking, styling text is very simple. The hard part is the artistic part: How to make text easy to read and look good? This is the focus of the tutorial, which is a must read for all web developers and designers.
View tutorial: http://blog.echoenduring.com/2010/05/13/create-beautiful-css3-typography/

Create a Letterpress Effect with CSS Text-Shadow


The “letterpress” effect is very popular in web design. Many people do it using Photoshop, but you can do it extremely easily using CSS3 only. How? Chris Spooner shows you how in this interesting article.
View tutorial: http://line25.com/tutorials/create-a-letterpress-effect-with-css-text-shadow

How to Create a Cool Anaglyphic Text Effect with CSS



Chris Spooner again! This time, the talented British web designer comes back with a tutorial showing you how you can create a anaglyphic effect with CSS. Not sure I’ll use it on a live site, but it’s always interesting to know how to do it.
View tutorial: http://line25.com/tutorials/how-to-create-a-cool-anaglyphic-text-effect-with-css

Text Rotation with CSS

Why should text always be displayed horizontally? CSS3 has the transform: rotate property, which allow you to rotate any elements, including text. The following tutorial, written by Jonathan Snook, will show how in details how to achieve an awesome rotated text effect.
View tutorial: http://snook.ca/archives/html_and_css/css-text-rotation

Text Embossing Technique With CSS


One more technique I’ve done exclusively in photoshop in the past. Thanks to CSS3, I’m now able to do it entirely in CSS.
View tutorial: http://www.reynoldsftw.com/2009/03/text-embossing-technique-with-css/

CSS textured text


Ok, this isn’t new, and this isn’t CSS3, but this example is so great that I can’t not feature it on this post. Nick La from WebDesignerWall explains how you can make gradients or textured texts using CSS.
View tutorial: http://www.webdesignerwall.com/tutorials/css-gradient-text-effect/

 

My favorite effects of CSS3 are the border-radius and box-shadow. Both of these used to be exclusively done with images.

 

Thank you for the tutorials! I have seen plenty of CSS3 tutorials before, but its the first time I'm actually seeing a tutorial based especially for the typography. Most wont bother with it, and shall normally use a few css properties like color, font, and the more professional ones may use text shadow, gradients and everything that CSS3 gives us to create such stunning content.

 

Loved the Text Rotation one. This is surely one which I was unaware of and would definitely use this on my new site. The others too are quite good and can be used effortlessly on many websites. I still wonder why many still prefer to use so many images to get similar things.

 

These are simply amazing. While I was aware of these effects, I haven't really used them on my sites. Now that you have posted the code and the stunning results here, I would make sure that I use them whenever the need arises. Thanks.

 

What I find most impressive about CSS3 is the fact that you can create animations with webkits - just amazing! Although, I wish more browsers supported it. For now, I'm sticking with JavaScript (and also jQuery) for most effects.

 

Cool post, I'm sure this will help me alot in CS3.

 

Great share Brandon, really useful for everyone! I will be sure to research into this more.

 

CSS3 does provide plenty of features, and its all limited by your imagination.

But even then, I'm not familiar with how the last design in the list was created.

 

It's pretty mind blowing to see textured text done with css instead of an actual font type. I've used this on the header of a site and people assume it's an image, they don't believe me at first when I tell them it's not

 

Wow, I've seen those effects before, but I never thought they were CSS. I'm sure some are graphic images, but to see that it's possible just using CSS3 is exciting. This gives me new motivation to get up to speed! Thanks.

 

The text rotation one so needs to be turned into a forum BB code. Seems like it'd be incredibly easy to do this, and would help quite liven up quite a few forums.