So, I've been mucking about with curved text and I must say I'm not sure I'm doing it right?

I've tried just taking the text that i've got and hitting the little warp text button.. this sort of works but it does distort the font so I have to keep the curve quite "shallow":

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Or I can use the pen-path tool to write it out again, which doesn't seem to distort the font as much... but I dunno, it still don't seem right, maybe not even as good as the warped text..?:
Click image for larger version. 

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I'm just not sure either are an improvement over the earlier 'straight' version???

Opinions please!!!