• Adobe Illustrator

  Using negative space / selecting and keying out white

  Posted by Ryan Hillaby on September 4, 2015 at 9:10 pm

  Heres my issue.

  I have a logo design I’m working on.
  Basically its a blue circle with a bunch of white elements/paths inside all onto of a white background (the idea is that the white is negative space).
  What i want to do is to instead of having white paths ontop of a blue circle, i want the white paths to be subtracted from the blue parts, so that all that is left is the blue. I know that I’m doing a terrible job of explaining this, so i hope you can decipher what I’m trying to say.

  thanks!

  Kalleheikki Kannisto replied 10 years, 9 months ago 2 Members · 1 Reply
• 1 Reply

• 

  Kalleheikki Kannisto

  September 5, 2015 at 7:04 pm

  Your tool of choice is the Pathfinder. Use it to first unite all white shapes into a single white shape (doesn’t matter if it is made out of separate parts, as long they’re all united. Then cut out the white shape from the blue shape. This way you will end up with just the blue shape with holes where the white was.

  One complication you may run into is if you have blue shapes on top of the white shape that are supposed to be holes in the white shapes. In that case you’ll have to unite those blue shapes and cut them out of the white shape first.

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