Cutting out what you draw
A field of stripes shown through two cut-outs: a disc from the nonzero rule, and a frame from the even-odd rule over two nested rectangles.
Drawing, patterns and transparency
Lines, shapes, gradients and see-through effects drawn by the file itself — sharp at any size, and weighing almost nothing.
Everything on these pages is drawn rather than photographed: a line is an instruction, not a grid of dots. Blow it up to the size of a poster and the edges stay clean, because there is nothing to blow up — the shape is worked out again at the size it is wanted.
On top of that come the effects a designer expects: one colour fading into another, a shape showing through what lies under it, a pattern repeated across an area, a drawing reused in twenty places without being stored twenty times, and layers a reader can switch on and off.
What it saves you
- Sharp at any size
- The same seal on a business card and on a poster. Nothing goes soft at the edges, and nobody has to keep a second version of the artwork for large jobs.
- Almost no weight
- A border drawn as a handful of instructions weighs next to nothing beside a photograph of the same border — and a document that is light is a document that arrives.
- One drawing, used everywhere
- A logo is kept once and placed as often as you like, so a sheet of a hundred labels does not carry a hundred copies of it.
See it done
Every one of these is a real PDF this library wrote, with the source that wrote it.
Transparency and blend modes
Half-transparent fills that overlap and mix, and one orange square laid over a blue bar in four different ways of mixing colours.
Gradients in a line and in a circle
Gradients in a line and in a circle painted into boxes the page cuts out: a two-colour blend across and another on the diagonal, a circular one whose outer colour is carried out to the corners, and one passing through three colours.
Text and shapes filled with a gradient
A gradient used as the colour something is filled with: a headline whose letters are windows onto a blend of three colours, and a panel filled with a circular one.
Content shown and hidden by layer
One floor plan on four layers a reader shows and hides: the furniture and the dimensions shown, the notes hidden until asked for, and a draft mark that is looked at but never printed.
One drawing, placed many times
One badge built as a drawing and placed eight times, plus once at half size: the file holds the drawing once, however many times it is placed.
One pattern, repeated across whatever it fills
Six panels filled with repeating patterns — bars, dots, a slant got without redrawing the pattern, a brick wall, two patterns crossing, a wider gap — and a logo whose letters are windows onto the bricks.
One rectangle, four masks
The same flat rectangle four times over, each under a different stencil — a gradient fade, darkened edges, letters cut through it, a stencil read from transparency — and a band that fades out with a label painted whole inside it.