Is there an easier way than Fusion?

I want to create a title overlay that consists of the title text and a background shape -- in this case a red 2D sphere. No animating is going on. They just fade up and down. Both the title and the red sphere are to appear above the background video. In the past I've used Fusion with nodes which is fine, but I was wondering if there is an even easier way of adding the red sphere behind the title? Granted, Fusion isn't all that difficult and I've done some fairly complex animations with it in the past, but I don't use it daily and it means I have to switch mental gears and refresh myself on node diagramming and that can take valuable minutes and I don't like doing that for such a simple task. Isn't there an easier, more intuitive way to do such a simple thing? The project I'm working on was created with R17 and I want to keep it that way.

Another intuitive way to do it is to create a red sphere with an alpha channel in a program like Photoshop and drop it into my timeline beneath my title and above the background image, but I would rather keep this within DR if possible?

Actually, fusion is the easiest way to do that. If its not for you, than that is far bigger problem than actual tools. If you have done complex animations in fusion before, why something so simple is all of a sudden such a big problem is hard for me to understand. Its like three or four clicks. My advice is that if you are tired from swimming against the current, try swimming downstream. By far the fast way. Certainly faster than going to Photoshop for something like that. It just boggles the mind thinking about it.

Going form edit page to fusion and making a red sphere with text in front took less than five sec and three nodes. Depending on how complex or not complex you want to make it, its by far the fastest way. And if you prepare in advance its still by far the faster and easiest ways.

In case anyone is interested, I did some digging and uncovered a very straightforward way to do this, and keeps you IN the Edit Page. No Fusion. It involves a using a Solid Color Generator, which creates a rectangle, and then rounding the edges of that rectangle after the layer is converted into a compound clip.

Even though using Fusion and Nodes is very powerful (I love it for complex animations), many users, like me, may prefer layers while editing, and this was very easy and intuitive. No switching of mental gears going from Layers mode on the Editing Page to Nodes in Fusion.