Photoshop shapes can be filled with colors etc, also with type. This can be manipulated in countless ways such as being distorted, blurred, smudged and more. Use this powerful technique to create some truly amazing shape designs
Create a rectangle via the rectangle tool in layer mode, make it a fairly large rectangle to fill the entire document
Go to the horizontal type tool and create some characters by hovering above the rectangle and clicking, perhaps whole paragraphs and once you have that, go to the type menu and convert to shape. Make certain you have run the spell checker beforehand because now you will just have two vector shapes and you won't be able to change the characters.
Put the rectangle above the letters, you can then combine it by selecting everything and then using the layer menu and combine shape and subtract command.
Go to the direct selection tool and select every point (lots and lots of them) and then go to the control bar and combine etc and use the merge shape components. Merge finalizes it, turns everything into a single vector
Merge makes it all one shape and now you can save it to the custom shapes presets via the edit menu and define custom shape command. It will now be added to the presets panel and you can then use it as a pixel / layer / path and apply it in any color such as solid / gradient / pattern etc
You can do exactly the same with other vectors such as circles etc, all can be filled with paragraphs etc and can be distorted and warped and effects applied.