One of the best parts of working with spot colors is that, double clicking on a swatch itself with no artwork selected, we can change the color of the swatch and all of that artwork will change color also to the new value of spot color adjustedĪll of your text in your document needs to be converted to outlines. This is because of the fact we are using spot colors which kind of separates everything and combines things together as necessary. This image has all of its artwork elements in one layer(which I normally don't do) but it was not necessary for me to have to use any Pathfinder tools or merging elements or whatever. If you are working in the CMYK color mode, you can use your separations preview window to view what each color separation will look like. Keeping your artwork organized with different layers in your layers panel is good practice but not totally necessary. Then automatically your design will be separated correctly for screenprinting. Do this correctly and color all of your artwork with spot colors only…. Just for purposes of this post, in my sample image, I added 4 spot colors to my swatches panel named Redd, Athletic Gold, Black, and white. Next assuming that you already know how many colors you need to make your design, create a new spot color in the swatches panel for every color you'll use in your design. Next in you would want to do is go to your swatches panel and delete every single swatch out of there. I say slightly larger just so it will give you a little room to work. This is of course if you are not printing with the four color process method.Ĭreate a new illustrator document and to set your art board size just slightly larger than your design size is going to be when it gets printed on the shirts. You will want to be working with the spot colors only. Since you were dealing with screenprinting designs, do not color your artwork with process colors. Thanks sorry for maybe being a bit wordy, just trying to be thorough.įor the purpose of screenprinting, you will avoid a lot of headaches with your file if you follow a few simple guidelines. I'm not even necessarily asking for a clear cut solution, I just know people must be able to do this in illustrator and I'd really appreciate anyone pointing me in the right direction like saying, 'Oh that's all clipping masks go read about those and narrow your learning research to that for a bit'. Trying to do other things like object > path > join throws an error about the objects included such as text elements, even if they've been converted to outlines. My problem is using pathfinder > unite generally merges all objects in one color, while I need to maintain separate colors to maintain the logo as intended and to not just have say, a large gold circle instead of a badge. So basically I need to be able to merge groups of objects in Illustrator that are parts of a logo I make, including text and stroked objects, into one object so that it is easily manipulatable by a printer so that it can be put on shirts, hats, etc.

So basically I've done some poking around about this question, and while I plan on doing more and learning more about the program in general, it seemed like the most expeditious way to figure this out might be to just try asking.

How to bevel text in illustrator cc