The purpose of design is to communicate a message and therefore I believe special effects should be used only if there is a reason to use them. This means it’s probably rare that you’ll need to create metal type but as a designer you should know the concept of how to do it even if you’ll only do it once in your career.

Above is an image of a banner I did for our college website to congratulate one of our star alumni who played in the Superbowl. To match the emblem for the Superbowl it called for some silver type.

In addition to that I needed to remind students it was time to submit their applications for graduation. Both were going to be shown on the same page so I thought the gold and silver would compliment each other and contribute to the overall message that each was trying to convey.

Below are the settings I used in Adobe Photoshop CS5 to get both the gold and silver effect. You’ll have to vary it a little depending on your type face and point size. This will just give you and idea so you know how to shape the metal to your specifications!

Silver type

Type something. It doesn’t really matter the color or the type but in the case above I used Trajan and black but you can use any color. Then click on the layer style effects at the bottom of the layers palette and apply the settings for the various blending options:

For Gold type just add a gradient overlay for the gold color:

The color I used here is #cfa51a and #fff6b8 for the light color