Exhibit/trade show graphics

[marlene]

A client wants me to create the artwork for a bunch of trade show booth panels, signs, etc. that will be produced by an exposition services company for their conference.

I don't think I've ever done this kind of stuff before (if I have, it was too long ago to remember). The expo services people prefer Illustrator files, so I am gonna try to build these panels in Illustrator (I have CS2 for Windows), despite my amateur status with AI.

The client described what she wants -- a background with an oval or elliptical gradient. (Everything else will be simple text and or vector graphics placed on that background.) Can the oval gradient be done in AI? I tried, but could only do a circle. I could stretch it out to be oval, but don't know what happens to the areas that extend beyond the edge of the "page."

If it's easier to do an oval gradient in Photoshop, I can do that and import (place?) it into my AI files.

Although I use PS 7 on a daily basis, I do have CS2.

Another AI question -- when I try to set up a page size for one of the panels (all the sizes that were given to me are in mms), 1525 mm 2440 mm, the first number kept changing itself to 1525.0001 mm as soon as I clicked outside the window where I entered the number.

What's that about?

mxh

[ElyseC]

I realize now that I don't think I've needed to create an elliptical gradient for real work, but recall playing with it a few times and, using built in gradient settings got me an oval with a circular gradient. IOW, the gradient remained resolutely circular, even if the circle I created it in became stretched into an oval. Someone will probably correct me, but you might have to create the gradient yourself by doing a Blend in Illustrator from a small oval the color of the center of the gradient out to the large oval set to the color you want for the outside edge.

If the result is too stepped, you might try increasing the number of blend steps, but the more steps the more objects Illustrator will be drawing and keeping track of. I've seen display slow to a crawl with complex blends. To avoid that slowdown every time the screen needs to redraw, you might open up that complex blend in Photoshop and let it rasterize the thing for you. Then you could place that back in AI with your text or other elements to print atop it.