How do I make the centres of letters transparent?

[jww]

Hi Everyone,

Using Adobe Illustrator, if I was to write the word "Bob" using the pen tool, how to do I make the centres of those letters transparent so when I place the word over a background of some sort, I can see the background through the centres of the letters.

Thanks in advance for your help.

John

[Riya]

Click the no fill button on the toolbar. Make sure you have the fill box (the soild box) on top of the stroke box (the outlined box).

[jww]

Hi Riya,

Thanks for the reply. I must have done something wrong because when I apply the no fill it fills the centre with the colour I used for the outline colour.

Any ideas on what I did wrong?

Thanks,

John

[urstwile]

Actually, you need to make the letters a compound path.

[PrintDriver]

You need to make the letters a compound path including the object you are knocking through.

[Danger_Mouse]

Hotkeys - select all shapes drawn for that letter and Ctrl 8 (pc) apple 8 (mac).

[jww]

Hi Everyone,

After reading all your replies, I've experienced a bit of a problem so I might need to elaborate on what I've already told you. I'm actually applying this to a signature that has been written with a rather thick marker pen. The name is Bob Pearson, so, to make this a bit easier to understand I'll just use the word Pearson. The letter "P" in the signature is separated from the rest of the word, and the "earson" is all joined together. In my experimenting with this, I managed, somehow, to get the centre of the letter "P" transparent as I require. But the "pearson" part of the signature, which is all joined together, still has solid centres in the "e", "a" and "o".
This is how drew the signature using the pen tool. I outlined the letter "P" and filled it with black. I filled the centre of the "P" with white, which is ok if the background's white, which in my case it isn't. I then outlined the "earson" and filled it with black and filled the centres of the letters "e", "a" and "o" with white.
Would someone be kind enough to tell me where I go from here?
Thanks.
John

[Danger_Mouse]

Make sure the P is not grouped with the EARSON.
Make sure the "inside" of the letters are on top
select EARSON (all relating parts) and hit Ctrl 8 (apple 8). ((Compound Path))


Should do it.

[jww]

Hi Danger Mouse,

Perfect, just what I wanted. Thanks very much for your help, and everyone else who contributed, I appreciate it very much. I've learned something today that will be very useful to me.

Thanks again.

John

[urstwile]

Just a couple of things to add.

As DangerMouse said, you need to make sure that the parts of the letters that you want to be transparent are on top.

But in order for the compound path to work correctly, both the opaque parts and the transparent parts need to FIRST be filled with the same color. I know this makes no sense, but bear with me. After both the parts that you want black and the parts that you want transparent are filled with black, hit Control or Apple 8 to make a compound path. That should work.

[morea]

http://www.graphicdesignforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5537

[Danger_Mouse]

I usually make them both strokes and no fills and compound path(which works as well), never realized about the different fills wouldn't work. Good to know!

[Danger_Mouse]

whoah quite the thread Morea (read the whole thing).

And the Oscar goes to.....(kidding)

[morea]

lol, my sense of humor got away from me at the end there. LOL.

I was trying to be funny, honest! :p

[Danger_Mouse]

:Dlol

[urstwile]

I usually make them both strokes and no fills and compound path(which works as well), never realized about the different fills wouldn't work. Good to know!
Yeah, what I discovered is if you have two different fills, the compound path (as well as the Exclude in Pathfinder) pick up the top object's fill as the fill color for the compound path.

>>>going to check Morea's link now.