AbstractWe present a method for creating ornamental typeface images. Ornamental typefaces are a composite artwork made from the assemblage of images that carry similar semantics to words. These appealing word‐art works often attract the attention of more people and convey more meaningful information than general typefaces. However, traditional ornamental typefaces are usually created by skilled artists, which involves tedious manual processes, especially when searching for appropriate materials and assembling them. Hence, we aim to provide an easy way to create ornamental typefaces for novices. How to combine users' design intentions with image semantic and shape information to obtain readable and appealing ornamental typefaces is the key challenge to generate ornamental typefaces. To address this problem, we first provide a scribble‐based interface for users to segment the input typeface into strokes according to their design concepts. To ensure the consistency of the image semantics and stroke shape, we then define a semantic‐shape similarity metric to select a set of suitable images. Finally, to beautify the typeface structure, an optional optimal strategy is investigated. Experimental results and user studies show that the proposed algorithm effectively generates attractive and readable ornamental typefaces.