'etching' text

[Eggles]

I have AI9 - yes, I know it's old - and have created a logo (3 PMS colours - 110 [yellow] and 287 [dark blue] and silver) for a client which consists mainly of 2 cylinders (pencil-shaped rather than coin-shaped) and on which the name of his company appears in Square 721 bold extended in silver on a dark blue cylinder and the reverse on the other cylinder. (The yellow is used on another element in the design).

The client has asked if I can make the text look as though it is 'etched' into the cylinder. I have tried a sort of drop shadow effect by making two more copies of the text, one white (actually 0% of the PMS colour) but without introducing black I'm at a bit of a loss what colour to make the 2nd copy. And I don't think it's going to look etched into the cylinder anyway.

Anyone got any suggestions?

 

[yoderman94]

You might could do it if you changed your silver to black and just made the silver gray. THen you could maybe do somekind of a bevel and imboss type thing.

Chad


Yoderman94.com

 

[Eggles]

This would be OK if the client wasn't insisting on using Silver as one of his colours.

 

[yoderman94]

your screwed then. Unless you do it in PS then it just becomes even more of a ngihtmare. I have created a spot color in PS, but it wasnt fun.

Chad


Yoderman94.com

 

[Eggles]

After playing around with this for ages, I have decided it simply isn't possible to do in AI9 - perhaps newer versions offer some sort of filter that would achieve it, but I am not going to waste any more time on this. I will not do it in Photoshop, as this defeats the purpose of a vector logo. But thanks for your help anyway.

 

[yoderman94]

Tis true!

Yoderman94.com

 

[Eggles]

I have had (sort of) some success with this. I made the cylinders 60% tints, which allowed me to make darker copy of the text in 100% of the colour for the 'shadow', and the 'highlight' as 15% (0% was just way too light) and then displaced the shadow down and to the right and the highlight up and to the left, both behind the the 60% version and it more or less gave the impression of being etched (if you squinted). Of course, the cylinders don't have anywhere near the 'bang' of the 100% versions, but I have PDFed the client a copy and explained why I had to make the cylinders lighter in order to get the text effect he wanted, and await to hear his decision.