Create Poetry or Quote Graphics for Social Media

You see them all over your social media feeds: Images that spark a recall of a moment or person from your world. You smile or sigh; love them, share them with your friends. Your friends like them, they love them, they share them with their friends.

You realize that you want to make it around the world, too. Viral. Well, I can’t put the ideas in your head, but I can show you how to turn your wisdom into a sharable graphic. You are about to learn how to create a poetry (or quote) graphics to share with your friends on social media.

Here is what I am creating along with you in this blog:

What We Will Use

• • GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation) – This open source image editing application is a great, free alternative to Adobe Photoshop. You can use whatever image editing application you have access to, but something that allows you edit in layers and apply effects gives you more creative power. Mobile phone apps work fine, too, but you will have fewer tools to work with. GIMP gives you a lot of cool tools to create your own effects, so I recommend taking the time to learn it if you really are interested in making text graphics that your friends will also want to share, and then their friends will want to share… But, you work with whatever app works for you and adapt the steps to fit whatever you are using.
  • Poetry Text – You need something to put on your graphic, right? Since I love poetry, I am going to use some Charles Bukowski words from the Poem Hunter website in this tutorial. But, when I create my social media graphics, I use my own poetry. You can use famous or original quotations, as well. You do you.
  • Background Image – We are going to download a background image from All-Free-Download. You can find additional graphic resources in the Make Art! Resource Boards.

Find Our Poetry Text

The search box is right at the top of the Poem Hunter website. You can enter words or a phrase that you remember from a poem, or enter the artist’s name and click Find.

Yay, so many Charles Bukowski poems to choose from! Browse until you find the poem you want to immortalize in a sharable social media picture. I happen to have already chosen my poem, so I’m going to search for it: “Eulogy to a Hell of a Dame.” I feel like that old dog sometimes when I think about my “Janes,” so I’m going to grab the last bit:

* Hover your mouse over the video and click the Full Screen button in the lower-right corner to enlarge the video.

Choose a Background and Fonts

Let’s face it, cool text graphics have some visual components, a theme, a background, fancy fonts. If you don’t already have some ideas on how you want your graphic to look, now is a good time to do some brainstorming. Design your graphic based on the specific poem or, if you plan on doing a bunch of poetry graphics for your own works, you can create a template to reuse. I have a template I use for general pieces, but I do occasionally deviate and create a special one-time design related to a particular poem. You do you.

Today, let’s take a look at All-Free-Download. I love this site. Be mindful of usage rights anytime you are using images from online databases, but All-Free-Download offers really nice graphics for personal use projects and many others you can use with some attribution.

LEARN MORE: Purdue University Copyright Basics

Now, the more specific you want to be about your design, the longer this process is going to take. For the sake of simplicity in these instructions, we will build a template with typewriter text on paper. So, let’s search for paper backgrounds. Scroll through and click the image you like. Check its Licensing information. If this is going to be more than a fun thing to share with your friends, make sure you give the artist their due attribution.

* Hover your mouse over the video and click the Full Screen button in the lower-right corner to enlarge the video.

If you’re not sure, err on the side of not using an image or, do as I do and research some DIY tutorials for creating paper backgrounds in GIMP:

• Parchment Paper
• Newspaper Clipping (I can’t wait to try this one)
• Paper Cutout

To find some good, free typewriter fonts, visit Dafont. Click Typewriter under Fancy in the menu. Click More Options and then check the 100% Free box. Download and install the font, as you normally would (Windows, Mac).

* Hover your mouse over the video and click the Full Screen button in the lower-right corner to enlarge the video.

Putting It Together

OK, we have our words, our background, our font, and GIMP all ready to go. Get into GIMP and create a new image. Now, I’m creating a universal square image that will fit into Instagram. I like to create a single graphic that conforms to the strictest standards for the social media I use. You do you.

If you are not sure, just follow me and make your image a square 1080 x 1080 pixels. Drop in your background image. If you downloaded something from All-Free-Download, use the JPG version. You can also use a PNG or EPS file if you are a bit more experienced.

Then, use the Scale tool to shape the background to the size of your image. Just click and drag the corners and, when you’re happy, hit the [Enter] key.

Now, you may want to crop the background or use other tools to get it to fit your needs. But I think resizing it works great here, so we’re going to keep it simple like we planned. Remember to save your file before you get too far into the project.

* Hover your mouse over the video and click the Full Screen button in the lower-right corner to enlarge the video.

Next, let’s grab our text from the poetry page and place it on the image using the Text tool. Let’s make sure we’re using our typewriter font. Save the graphic again. (Just a reminder to keep those saves going each time you are somewhat happy with the element.)

Select the Text tool again to add another text box for the attribution. I like smaller text for the artist’s attribution, and, really, the graphic could be this simple. But, I like to layer some visual stuff, and this bit from Bukowski makes me think of days I sat in a bar thinking about my “Jane,” cursing napkins with sad words from a pen I kept in my purse. So, I went back to All-Free-Download and picked a different background and an additional hand-drawn heart image that I added onto my graphic. You add in pictures and text as we just did until you have things organized and looking exactly the way you want it. Again, you do you.

* Hover your mouse over the video and click the Full Screen button in the lower-right corner to enlarge the video.

Publish It

To create your shareable image, choose Export As from the File menu, and then select the JPEG option from the Select File Type list. Then, edit the filename and save location, if desired, and Export. You can adjust the quality, if you like, but I like to just keep it up about 90%. Click Advanced Options to tweak other settings and add any Comments. Click Export and your image is ready for posting to social media.

* Hover your mouse over the video and click the Full Screen button in the lower-right corner to enlarge the video.

* Full video tutorial coming soon to YouTube.