Disclaimer: I have taken many ideas from a Photoshop video tutorial I found. For this “how to”, I will only mention the steps that I have done. You surely are smart enough to take the idea many steps further… The post originally appeared on my blog Kassettenkiste.
I believe this is the first time, that I actually write a short tutorial on anything. Last days I got one of those mails again, asking how I recreated the Soulwax CD-cover some time ago. Since I am fairly lazy, I will now write a blog post on how to do this cover in Adobe Illustrator. You will be able to use this for printing purposes.
I would love to see what you have done with that idea. Please send me a tweet or an email with your work, so I can share it.
Step 1
Create a new document and set a black background. Create a small white circle with no border in the top left hand corner. Select the circle and Object – Transform – Move horizontally and vertically while also duplicating the circle. It is easier when you create one row, then group it and copy it vertically.
Step 2
Group all circles and duplicate that layer. Now insert the text of your liking. It should above the circle group. I used a fairly bold sans-serif font, because I found it the most readable. The bigger and bolder, the easier to read. Then Object – Expand. I do not remember, if this step was really necessary.
Step 3
Now take the text with the duplicated circles and use the Pathfinder to Intersect the objects (use Alt-Click). What you have left is only the circles overlaying the former text. Put a Gaussian Blur of around 8px on it. You may have to play around with that, when you use bigger or smaller text.
That should get you to the final image. Have fun recreating your own version and confuse your friends and co-workers. Walk away from the image and squint your eyes a little to read the text properly.