Sometimes you might find that you want to have text cut out of a shape, rather than placed on top of it.  This allows for the colors and/or patterns on the layer behind the shape to show through the letters.  You have a two options for doing this in Illustrator…both of which are quick and easy.

First, create you shape.  I am using a plain black rectangle as seen below.

 Next, place your text on top of your shape.  

Once you have it positioned where you want to cut it out, with the text selected, create outlines of the text by going to the Type menu and choosing Create Outlines.  The text will no longer be editable once you do this – so be sure it reads correctly.

 Now you have two options on how to proceed in cutting or knocking the text out.

OPTION ONE

With both the outlined text and the shape selected, go to your Pathfinder palette and click on the Divide icon.  This will divide the overlapping areas into separate shapes.  Then select any of the letter shapes and delete.  this will remove the overlapping area and leave a “hole” through the shape.

Delete all of the divided letter shapes, and you are left with your orginal shape with “holes” where all of the letters used to be.

 OPTION TWO

 With both the outlined text and the shape selected, go to your Shape menu and make a Compound Path.  This will make the two shapes into a single shape, leaving any overlapping areas as negative space. 

Now you can take your shape with cutouts and place it on top of other layers and what is behind it will show through!

Recently I saw a great tutorial on how to use Illustrator to make a seamless pattern. Rather than write our own, here is the link to the tutorial I got from Shutterstock:

http://www.shutterstock.com/newsletter/100/article3.html

Use stock Illustrator symbols to quickly show clients (or your friends!) what a logo or image would like on clothing.

Go to your symbol libraries (if you need help with this refer back to PART ONE: “A Quick Introduction to Illustrator Symbols”), choose the Fashion Library and add the desired pieces of clothing to your Symbols Palette.

Drag and drop the symbol(s) to your artboard. For this quick exercise I am going to add our logo to a hat and a t-shirt, so I have dragged one of each symbol into the document.

I am using a single instance of each symbol here, so I can simply Expand (Object > Expand) the shape if I want to update the color or add a stroke. (I will go over how to edit the actual Symbol in a subsequent part of this series.) Then just add the art or text that you want to appear on your clothing item and you are done!