Closed (sort of)
TEOM as you know it has been closed. I will keep it up for reference but it no longer will receive tutorial updates.
There are plans for a completely new site. If you'd like to be notified once the other site is up, simply subscribe to my mailing list.
Thanks for the support throughout all these years :)
Illustrator CS2
Invitations and Party Favors (Part II)
Status: Completed Part II (last updated on 05/03/08)
The second and final part of this tutorial will deal with a few elements added to an invitation, how to print a double-sided card, distributing boxes evenly and a few extra steps needed to make the invitation that we worked on Part I ready for sending to a printer.
Contents & Updates
Adding vertical text. (04/20/08)
Evenly distributing elements. (04/21/08)
Sending an invitation to print. (05/03/08)
Printing a double-sided card. (05/03/08)
Illustrator has a Vertical Type Tool that will create the vertical text for you, so this is quite a simple process.
The way you use it is pretty much the same as you would the Type Tool: click once for creating point type (e.g. what you type will follow one line until you press the Enter key to break it) or click-and-drag for creating area type (e.g. line breaks will be created automatically in order to accommodate the text inside the specified area).
Due to text flow and reading difficulties, I don’t recommend using more than one line for vertical text, or at least not using the alignment shown below.
The above image uses the Standard Vertical Roman Alignment. If you don’t want to use that, you can uncheck the option on the Character palette by clicking on the palette menu icon (the black arrow on the top right corner).
Evenly distributing elements.
On part I this was actually discussed with the stripes. However, what happens when you start adding complexity to the objects?
Now we’ll be working with boxes as if creating a bingo card :)
These boxes have strokes, so we must consider them when entering the move distance.
So here I’m creating a box using the Rectangle Tool. At this point it uses the default tool settings for Illustrator, that is: white background, black stroke, 1pt stroke.
The width I’m using is the same as the width of two stripes and I used Smart Guides (to show me the stripe path when the cursor moved close to it) to draw the box instead of manually entering the width value in the Transform palette.
I didn’t really measure the distance from the top of the card to place the box. This is something that you’ll have to calculate depending on the number of boxes you want: in my file there’ll be 3 boxes distributed horizontally and 4 vertically.
If I wanted to specify a distance from the top, I would first align the card to it and then move it. In this case, the alignment could be done using the artboard as a reference: first click on the object you want to align (the box), then open the Align palette, click on the palette menu and check Align to artboard, and finally click on the Vertical Align Top button. To move just hit Ctrl + Shift + M or right-click and choose Transform » Move and enter the vertical distance (which should be a negative value if the angle used is 90° or positive for a 270° angle).
Now let’s work a bit more on this box: we have the background and stroke colors to change, plus the stroke width.
The first two you already know how to change so I won’t detail that step.
The stroke width can be a little bit more tricky, as depending on the alignment it can change the box width and height. For you to better understand this, it is easier to apply a live effect to multiply the box and then watch the changes as we work on the stroke.
With the box selected, go to Effect » Distort & Transform » Transform. We won’t be able to work on both horizontal and vertical distribution using just one instance of this effect, so first enter the settings for the horizontal distribution.
Remember to remove one item from the number of copies, which corresponds to the original box, e.g., if you want 3 boxes create only 2 copies.
Let me take the opportunity to also show you something else before we proceed: units.
When I started this document, the units that I used were inches. After I closed this document, I worked on something else using different units and my preferences were kept when I came back to this invitation, so that’s why you see pixels (px) on my settings. If I wanted to change this, I would go to Edit » Preferences » Units & Display Performance and would change the General value.
Now back to the live effect…
We’ll still use the Transform effect on this object, but look what happens if I try to select it again through the Effect menu:
Obviously we want to apply a new effect (which will also keep the previous one). So just click on that button and enter the settings for the vertical distribution.
Again, I’ll take the chance to show you something else: the Appearance palette.
This palette shows you the attributes of the selected object and, not only that, it also lets you add, change, remove or duplicate them.
As you can see, there are two Transform effects displayed. If I wanted to remove one of them, all I had to do click on it and then click on the trash can on the palette – actually, I just did that :)
Now I want to re-create that effect, but I don’t want to use Ctrl + Z to undo the effect removal nor do I want to use the Effect menu. In this case, there are two things that I have to do: first, I need to select the remaining Transform effect and duplicate it:
Second, I need to change the copy by double-clicking on it on the palette. Since this effect’s order won’t change the result, I can edit either one displayed on the palette.
This is one of the palettes that I strongly recommend to leave open at all times. Although it has only a few options, it can be quite a powerful ally when working with very complex objects, e.g. objects with multiple strokes and effects.
Back to the stroke…
On the Control palette change the stroke width to something a little bit thicker than the default 1pt – I’m using 4pt on my box.
Now open the Stroke palette, which can be either through the Control palette (click on the Stroke link) or through the Window menu. The difference between them is that if you use the Control palette option, the Stroke palette will appear under it and will disappear as soon as you click away; through the Window menu the Stroke palette would be floating around, just like the other main palettes.
There are 3 alignment options (left-to-right): align stroke to center, which aligns the middle of the stroke to the path, leaving part of it in and part of it out of the object, resulting in a final object width (and height!) of original width + 1x stroke width; align stroke to inside, which leaves the stroke inside the object without altering the final width; align stroke to outside, which puts the entire stroke outside the object, changing the object’s final width to original width + 2x stroke width.
Now go ahead and click on each one of those options and watch how image changes.
Align to center: all boxes are the same.
Align to inside: middle boxes are smaller.
Align to outside: middle column is thinner.
As you can see, the first option is the one that works better at this point. You could still try to use the other options if you wanted to, but then you would have to consider the stroke width when making the copies both horizontally and vertically.
Sending an invitation to print.
Now that we have the artwork set we are ready to print, right? *Wrong!”
There are several things that need to be taken into consideration when printing and our main obstacle here is that there’ll be multiple cards printed on a sheet and we or the printing company needs to be able to tile them.
If we were working on a simple artwork, one copy on each sheet, a home-printed work, then our setup would be just fine. Nothing too fancy, nothing too basic.
Since this isn’t the case, here are the steps that we still need to take in order to finish the invitation.
I strongly recommend that you make a copy of your file before proceeding, as some of the steps will make part of the artwork not editable (e.g. you won’t be able to change the text).
Redefining the bleed
If we want to tile the invitation we need to make the best use of the sheet area available – think $ and think green :)
Remember that I mentioned that bleeding should be just about 3 millimeters or 0.12 inches? So now we need to make sure that our work doesn’t exceed that amount and for that create a new layer and inside the layer create a rectangle the size that we need (we’ve discussed that already, and if you are using a live effect for getting an exact scale value, don’t forget to expand the object later!).
Now unlock all other layers and hit Ctrl + A to select everything.
The new rectangle must be on top of everything for this to work.
Right-click and select Make Clipping Mask from the pop-up menu. You’ll notice that everything that exceeded the rectangle’s limits is now hidden, although they still exist.
The clipping mask will create a group of all objects in the layer where it was created, so don’t be scared when you notice that all other layers went blank ;)
Recreating the crop marks
The problem with using the “actual” crop marks is that Illustrator won’t handle more than 1 (although this seems to have changed in CS3), which again would be fine if we were printing only one invitation per sheet. Another problem is that you can’t copy-and-paste the crop mark between documents.
In order to solve these issues, nothing better than using a rather overlooked filter :)
Before applying the filter, let’s get rid of the “useless” crop mark. Simply go to Object » Crop Area » Release and the crop mark will be “converted back” to the shape that was used as a reference.
If you expand your layer, you’ll notice that there are only two things in it: a group (clipping mask result) and a path (reversed crop mark).
The path should be on top of the group (like in the screenshot) and should be selected (when the crop mark was released it should have been automatically selected).
Now go to Filter » Create » Crop Marks.
This filter will create a group with several horizontal and vertical paths based on the previous path’s dimensions.
The creation of paths instead of static crop marks is that they can be removed when redundant on a tiled layout.
The lines are a little bit thiner than the regular crop marks but if you wish to change this all you have to do is select the group and change the stroke weight in the Stroke or Control palette.
You can delete the path that was used to create the “fake” crop marks.
The final step
The last step is to flatten the artwork to have as little compatibility issues as possible when taking the file for printing.
Hit Ctrl + A to select everything on the artboard and go to Object » Flatten Transparency and use the following settings:
The resulting work looks rather messy…
...but that’s because every single object has been expanded into a vector path, including the dotted pattern, and multi-colored shapes (those using some sort of transparency effect) have been divided so that each color resides on its own path.
The good news is that, despite this “mess”, the file size has barely increased :)
Now save your file as .EPS and take it to the printer.
It is a good idea to check with your printer the software that they use – you might have to save the file as a legacy version (the option is available after you entered the file name and extension on the save dialog) in order to avoid once again compatibility issues. It is also a good idea to check whether they’ll do the tiling for you or if they’ll charge extra for it, although there are places that if you use the file dimensions they specify they’ll have a template ready just waiting for your artwork.
For this I won’t go into a deep explanation as most of the things that need to be done have been discussed before :)
The double-sided card in this case consists of a folded card stapled onto a small plastic bag (with candies!).
If you unfold this card, you’ll notice that everything has actually been printed on the same side, but with a different orientation so that, once folded, text and images can be read on the front and on the back.
Here’s a basic layout of a card before being folded so that you have a better idea of how to create it:
The dotted line represents the fold.
Text on the top part has been reflected both horizontally and vertically. In order to do in just one step, go to Object » Transform » Transform Each:
One important thing that you must consider here is the margin for both the fold and the staple, so that your artwork doesn’t get ruined by neither of them.
And that’s all there is to it :)
Tut-on-Demand · Apr 20, 2008 ·