GIMP offers an easy way to enhance your text by using the Alpha to logo maker/creator scripts. You can access them by simply navigating to File/Create/Logos. Unfortunately there is no actual preview in the menu list to give you an idea of what each option produces (the GIMP manual offers just a basic preview), so below we have each logo style that GIMP can do through the magic of various Script-Fus, all in one handy list.

Once you select any of these from File/Create/Logos, you can tweak the settings for even more exciting results. Each logo below was produced by using the default settings: