How to Highlight Text on Videos like a PRO

It's a no-brainer why text captions are very important in a video today.

According to Facebook, text augments the video watching experience on the biggest social network since around 85% of the videos on Facebook are watched in mute mode.

Moreover, Facebook studies also found that 80% of people reacted negatively to videos without captions. And that watch time is increased by 12% for ads that had video captions.

Research shows that many young people watch videos on mute now even if they don’t have any hearing impairments. Text captions clearly enable the creator to communicate the gist of the video in such situations when audio can't be of much help.

This phenomenon can also be seen on other social networks like Instagram and Twitter and of late YouTube content creators have also started paying attention to adding text overlays to engage with their audience better.

The most important aspect to consider while adding text is to make sure they are readable and beautiful. While beauty lies in the eye of the beholder, there are certainly ways to make sure that text on videos looks elegant and engaging. That's what Typito is trying to solve using its library of stylized motion graphic templates.

Creators can use Adobe After Effects grade text animations with a few clicks on Typito. While that's a topic for another fine day, we want to help you learn the most popular ways of making text readable and how to highlight the important aspects of a message. Let's dive right in:

1. Text Highlight Templates

Text highlight templates that let you highlight word by word or even letter by letter gives you the flexibility to highlight the section of the text element that's most critical.

This is the most popular and sophisticated way to highlight text on video, mostly adopted by famous social media channels like World Economic Forum etc. You can check out the one-click highlight templates provided by Typito.

Highlight templates on Typito

2. Text with Shadow

One of the most commonly used techniques to make text readable is adding shadow. It's also useful if you think that good old simple text can convey your message better. Let's see how Typito lets you do it:

Text with shadow improves readability

3. Text with a Background

The most common way to highlight and make your text readable is to add a background shape or image that contrasts well with the text. If you think you can't lose out on the video content that's hidden behind the shape, feel free to add some transparency to the shape. This ensures that the messaging doesn't get lost with the changing video content.

Text with a contrasting background gets your attention easily.

4. Basic Highlighted Text

This is a very recent trend that can be observed across videos on Facebook and Instagram. They basically have the background of the text field filled with a color that contrasts well with the text. Remember the highlighter tool in Microsoft Word? This is not very different.

While highlighter gets the job done quicker, it might not give you the customisability that a background shape can provide. However, there is no doubt that highlighters can get the job done fast and easy. Typito offers certain templates that have in-built highlighters and you can use them the way you want.

5. Multi Colour Text

You might have certain phrases in your text that demands more attention. Multi-colour is the way to go if you want to highlight them better. Typito lets you add multi-color on all templates as well as text fields. Here's how you can do it:

You can highlight important terms in a line using a different color.

I hope you liked this quick refresher on how to highlight text on videos. We also created a quick video that covers all the ways to highlight text on video.