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About this lesson

Add a background color and either a texture or a larger, ghosted version of the logo in the background complete with a layer mask to keep everything confined to our art board.

Quick reference

Adding a Background

Add a background color and either a texture or a larger, ghosted version of the logo in the background complete with a layer mask to keep everything confined to our artboard.

When to use

To enhance our presentation we will add some background elements including a large, ghosted version of our logo along with a subtle copy of our custom texture.

Instructions

  • Open the the Adding a Background - Exercise.ai file
  • Unlock the Grunge Texture Layer and then select the texture and copy it by pressing Command/Ctrl+C
  • After you have made a copy you can turn off the visibility of the layer and lock it once again since we are done with it for now
  • Create a New Layer above the BG Layer and then paste the custom texture onto it by pressing Command/Ctrl+V
  • Scale the texture down a bit by holding the Shift Key and dragging any of the four corners inwards
  • Drag out a copy of the texture while holding Alt/Option+Shift and move it just to the right of your first copy
  • Select both copies and group them together by pressing Command/Ctrl+G
  • Scale the texture back up so that it covers the artboard
  • Use the Eyedropper Tool (I) to fill your custom texture with the mid tone orange from the logo
  • With your texture still selected go to the Window Menu and choose 'Transparency'
  • From here, lower the opacity of the texture to about 35%
  • Once you are happy with the texture, unlock the BG Layer and select the background shape with your Selection Tool (V) before making a copy of it
  • Return to the layer above it where your custom texture is and then press Command/Ctrl+F to paste a copy of the background shape in front of the texture
  • Hold down the Shift Key and select your texture and the copy of the background shape in front, and then press Command/Ctrl+7 to create a Clipping Mask
  • Double click the texture layer and then rename it to 'BG Texture'
  • Select the Clean Logo with your Selection Tool (V) and make a copy of it, and then add another New Layer just above the BG Layer
  • Paste the logo onto this layer by pressing Command/Ctrl+V 
  • Scale the copy of the logo up by dragging outwards from any of the four corners while holding the Alt/Option+Shift keys
  • Experiment with the size and placement of the logo, perhaps placing it so only half of the face is showing on the left side
  • Once you are happy with the placement, return to the Transparency Panel and lower the opacity of the large logo to 35%
  • Lock the BG Texture Layer and then select the background shape on the BG Layer once again
  • Make a copy of the background shape and then switch back to your layer containing the large copy of the logo and press Command/Ctrl+F to Paste in Front
  • With the background shape still selected, hold the Shift Key and click on the large ghosted copy of the logo so they are selected at the same time
  • Press Command/Ctrl+7 to apply another Clipping Mask
  • Double click on the layer and rename it to 'Ghost Logo' and lock it
  • Lock your layers and then turn off the visibility of the Divider Layer

Hints & tips

  • Remember that if you want to change the position or size of an object with a Clipping Mask applied that you will need to first release the Clipping Mask by going to the Object Menu and choosing Clipping Mask > Release from the menu.
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  • 00:04 Since we've started our presentation here we can now maybe think about adding some
  • 00:08 stuff to the background.
  • 00:09 So what I wanna do for a second is unlock my crunch texture layer, and
  • 00:14 I'll have to scroll over here just to see it.
  • 00:18 So I'm going to make a copy of it by pressing Cmd+C and
  • 00:21 then I can lock it and poke out the eyeball again, and
  • 00:24 let's create a new later just above our BG layer.
  • 00:27 I'll paste it in by pressing Cmd+V and I wanna maybe scale it down a little bit
  • 00:32 cuz i don't want it to be too big, all right?
  • 00:34 And I'm actually going to make a copy of it by dragging it over while holding
  • 00:38 Alt+Option+Shift.
  • 00:39 And now I can take both of these copies and group them together.
  • 00:43 And now I can scale it back up just so
  • 00:46 it fills out the canvas nicely and it gives us a little bit of texture here.
  • 00:52 Okay, and I think for this, let's try and
  • 00:54 sample maybe our mid tone orange color from earlier.
  • 00:57 And I actually want to make sure that this doesn't spill outside of the box but
  • 01:02 before I do that, I wanna lower the opacity.
  • 01:05 So I'll come up to Window, open the transparency panel, and
  • 01:09 then maybe reduce it to around 35% because I don't want it to
  • 01:13 compete too much with the texture on the logo.
  • 01:17 That's just a nice kinda subtle background element that we can add here.
  • 01:21 And then, once you're happy with the transparency of the texture,
  • 01:24 unlock the BG layer.
  • 01:25 Create a copy of it by pressing Cmd+C.
  • 01:27 And then, make sure you come on layer nine where your texture is and press Cmd+F.
  • 01:33 Okay, and just like before we'll hold down the shift key and select the texture,
  • 01:37 come up to the object menu and choose clipping mask make.
  • 01:41 And now that is contained to our artboard.
  • 01:44 All right, so double click that and we'll call this BG texture and
  • 01:48 something else I'm thinking about adding to the background is maybe
  • 01:51 a large ghosted version of this logo.
  • 01:54 So I'll maybe select my clean version of the logo here, make a copy of it and
  • 01:59 then create another new layer here above the BG layer.
  • 02:03 Now once again, I'll paste it in by pressing Cmd+Ctrl+V on the keyboard.
  • 02:08 And now I'll scale it up by dragging outwards from any of the four
  • 02:11 corners while holding down the Alt+Opt+Shift keys.
  • 02:15 And for this, I'm just trying to roughly kinda figure out a placement and
  • 02:19 a size for this that will look pretty good on our background.
  • 02:22 All right, I'm thinking maybe somewhere around here so
  • 02:26 you can see a little bit of the eye, could be pretty nice.
  • 02:31 But I don't want the text to be too intrusive on the bottom, so just wanna get
  • 02:35 it maybe somewhere around here, could pretty good, okay?
  • 02:41 And then once you've done that and
  • 02:42 you're happy with the placement, we wanna bring up our transparency once again, and
  • 02:47 maybe reduce this to around 35% like our background texture.
  • 02:50 And then we're going to do the same thing where we select our background and
  • 02:55 we wanna make sure that we're grabbing the actual shape here so
  • 02:59 you may have to lock the BG texture layer to do that.
  • 03:02 But then you can grab your background shape, copy it and press Cmd+F on layer
  • 03:07 10, hold down the Shift key and select your large ghosted copy of the logo.
  • 03:11 And now this time we use the keyboard shortcut Cmd+Ctrl+7.
  • 03:16 Now you'll have a nice kind of large ghosted version of the logo.
  • 03:20 So for this, we can double click it and rename the layer, ghost logo.
  • 03:25 And then we can lock that in our BG layer.
  • 03:29 And we've got a nice looking presentation going on.
  • 03:31 So I'm wondering if we still need the divider here
  • 03:34 that we created in the last part.
  • 03:36 I'm actually going to just turn that layer off for a second, and
  • 03:40 maybe just move these two logos a little bit closer together in the center.
  • 03:44 So that way, I can more of the large logo in the background and
  • 03:49 I think that's looking pretty cool.
  • 03:52 And I think our presentation is in order.
  • 03:54 So I'm just gonna lock these other layers here and then save my work

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