[Mike Gondek]

Appears you figured this out as the 3-page pdf is 880k on the link you provided.

I got it down to 743K by opening it in Acrobat Pro and using document >> reduce file size. Prior to that I used advanced pdf optimizer, which only got it to 843K. For a 3-pager, don’t think you can get much smaller than that without compressing the images more.

[Mike Gondek]

Layer 2 (Letter)
Letter Shape
Oval Overlay
Circle

Layer 1 (Background)
Letter shape
Circle

Select the 3 elements in layer 2. Then use object >> clipping mask >>make. Your top object (the letter) will mask out the other elements underneath in your selection.

Then select you 2 elements in layer 1, and use pathfinder >> minus front.

Obviously after you create this you will not notice any difference, until you move one of the two layers. It is like using a cookie cutter on dough, but with much more digital precision.

[Mike Gondek]

Try preferences >> performance >> enable Open GL Drawing (ON)

Also check to see how much space you have left on your hard drive, and run from your applications/utilities/Disk utility.

[Mike Gondek]

Have you tried Make with warp rather than make with mesh. You should have less problem uneven distortion.

You can also use make with top object, but make sure your curves handles are created evenly using the classic 1/3rd rule of bezier curves.

[Mike Gondek]

place your image in illustrator
object>live trace>make

[Mike Gondek]

From the brushes palette, drag the ink drop brush to your document page and drop it. Select the items and change their colors and transparency to get a black one, there is also a blue grey swatch color you can click on and change to black for the little splat on the top right.

Once you have changed the elemtns to beck select them all (including the box set to fill of none) and drag this back to the brush palette. Save this as a scatter brush and name it (eg: ink Drop 2). You will then want to enter the settings for size, spacing, scatter, rotation from the original.

[Mike Gondek]

Glad to hear things worked out. We often deal with preparing files for outside the US & UK, which usually means compensating for a poor mindot/shadow range and large traps.

[Mike Gondek]

In document setup make your file CMYK. Choose what spot color you need and add it to the swatches palette. (Swatches flyout menu >> open swatch library >> color books >> Pantone solid coated. Every element (fills, strokes, bitmapped effect eg: drop shadow)on your page will need to be colored with this 1 spot color.

You can confirm that everything is in the 1 spot color by using windows >> separations preview >> click overprint preview >> uncheck the spot color and the page show be blank, check only the spot color and your document should look the same.

You can also look in your swatches palette, if the swatch has a dot in the bottom right corner, it is a spot color. It is professional standard practice in the printing trade to remove all colors from the swatch palette that are not being used, so the separator can look at your swatches palette and confirm that you built the file properly.

If you still need help, you can email me the file. Just do a save as to .ai prior and uncheck pdf compatible to make the file smaller.

[Mike Gondek]

This is much easier than it sounds. Just take your image make it grayscale, then put a color correction curve on top of this. Draw about 3 to 4 tall waves on the curve and it will look like a shiny chrome. If you do not make your image grayscale first, it will look like a thermograph.

[Mike Gondek]

Try making a pattern swatch, rather than copying and pasting your pattern tile, your file will become much slimmer/quicker.

You basically draw a rectangle with no file or stroke, and send that to back. Then select your rectangle and artwork and drag this to your swatches to make a pattern swatch.