[Vincent Rosati]

I’ve heard the term used in two ways…

One would refer to using a Pantone or otherwise spot color (Window / Swatches / (Click the drop-down arrow) Open Swatch Library / Color Books / Pantone Solid Coated or whatever).
They you’d pick one color swatch. You’d use that color swatch to color everything in your art. Then you would set the different color values for your components using the slider in the Color palette.
When using spot colors, printers are able to create a single plate that can print one color ink that will be screened to different values.

Another, more involved, way would be to use screen patterns, (Window / Swatches / (Click the drop-down arrow) Open Swatch Library / Patterns / Basic… / Dots, Lines or whatever.
Then you would use these patters to effectively build your own screens. This can be time consuming. It’s potentially a much more involved process, but you would have total control.

Vince

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[Vincent Rosati]

Once you’ve converted a path to a type path it can no longer have fills or strokes. The strokes and fills will be applied only to the live text.

For something like this I’d…

Create 2 new layer in the Layers palette, for a total of three layers.
Create a circle in the bottom layer.
Copy, Paste in Front, than move this new circle onto a new layer.
Copy, Paste in Front, than move this third circle onto the top layer.

The bottom layer will be your color.
The second layer will be your lower text.
The top layer will be your upper text.

You can lock the top text layer so you can easily select the text in the second layer.

To flip any text that is on a path (text created with the Type on Path Tool), with the text layer selected, select either the Direct Select or Group Select tool from the tools palette. This will expose 3 handlebars – left, right, and center.
You’ll want to manipulate the center bar. You can use this to change the center point, or to flip the text to the other side of the path – which I think is what you want to do.

Then you can also adjust your tracking and baseline shift, if needed, in the Character palette.

Vince

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[Vincent Rosati]

Are you saving as PNG-8 with a white matte maybe, or PNG-24?
Can you attach your file.

Vince

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[Vincent Rosati]

Typically this is just a screen rendering issue, but you point out that you also see the issue in the print.
Most likely, you’ll need to edit or possibly rebuild the pattern.

Vince

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[Vincent Rosati]

The attached file illustrates a method…
4354_assisv10.ai.zip

1
Make your masks.

2
Select the interior components and Object / Arrange / Send to Back.

3
Select your front and back vectors and Window / Pathfinder / Minus Back.

4
Select everything and Object / Clipping Mask / Make.

Vince

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[Vincent Rosati]

Maybe check the options menu in the Transform palette and see if you have “Align New Objects to Pixel Grid” checked. I think this was introduced in CS5.

Vince

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[Vincent Rosati]

I’m in CS4, so I may not be opening the file properly…
But it looks like you just need to remove any clipping masks and ungroup everything. Then select all of the components you want to join and click Window / Pathfinder / Unite.

Vince

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[Vincent Rosati]

I would rasterize the art as a CMYK TIF with LZW compression.
It is hard to say why you would be having an issue with rasterizing.. ‘looks horrible’.
Consider that, if you aren’t able to rasterize your artwork to an acceptable level, why would they be able to. It sounds like there might be an issue that hasn’t been identified.
You can export right out of Illustrator, but I usually open my AI files with Photoshop when I need to rasterize.

Vince

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[Vincent Rosati]

Yeah, you can duplicate the text using copy/back (edit / copy / paste in back).
Or, you could select the text, and in the Appearance palette, click the toggle and Add New Fill Layer. Change the new Fill Layer color. You’ll probably have to drag the new fill layer to be under the Characters layer, inside the palette.

Vince

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[Vincent Rosati]

Based on the file, you can just grab the pattern and put it in the Swatches Palette, than apply the new swatch to the text.

So first, paste the pattern into your business card AI file, change it to the appropriate color, than create the pattern swatch.

It looks like the swatch that you pulled to the artboard was probably just the registration swatch.

Vince

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