Need to create transparent space within vector image

Thank you all so very much for your suggestions!  I really appreciate the help.  Reached out to the company and you all were right, the white was just fine.  I will practice with the other suggested methods for future projects.

I work in Pre-Press creating film positives for silk-screening. 

Everyone who said "check with the print house, you might not need to do anything" is correct - In our workflow, I don't have any problem with the white shown in the sample screenshot. As long as the blue and the orange/gold are set up as separate spot colors, I can trap and output film separations from what's there with no effort on your part.

If you are determined to remove all the negative white space because you want to do a mockup on a colored background, or just because you like to learn new technqiues then Jacob's second option of paths and minus front should work. Usually I need to select all the the separate paths and then combine them into a compound path (Path, Compound Path, Make) - grouping often causes unexpected results.

The masking option as described below will look good on screen but would create extra work for our workflow, in that it can't be easily trapped (one color needs to be made a little larger than the other so it covers any misregistration on press).

Hello @Brandi254511860afh,

Thanks for reaching out. As mentioned by Scott and Mylenium you might not need to remove the white background. But if you still do, kindly try the steps shared in this tutorial and check if it helps: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbRLermLRcI

Looking forward to your response.

Thanks,

Anubhav

Is this image to be printed on a white background? If so then I agree with Scott and Mylenium. If you need it transparent to print on a colored T-shirt then try Jacob's suggestions. However, if this image has been created via Image Trace (which results in many confusing to work with compound paths and masks) then the paths may not be able to be easily manipulated via Jacob's suggestion.

Brandi,

Presuming the blue bakground is vector artwork, you can do it as follows, if a mask is a viable way:

1) Group the white paths if not already, you can select one and the use Select>Same>Fill Color to select them all;

2) ShiftClick the blue background to also select that;

3) In the Transparency panel click Make (Opacity) Mask with Invert Mask ticked.

Presuming both the white paths and the blue background are vector artwork, you can do it as follows to get actual blue paths:

1) Group the white paths if not already, you can select one and the use Select>Same>Fill Color to select them all;

2) ShiftClick the blue background to also select that;

3) Pathfinder>Minus front/Subtract from shape area.

In case of doubt simply talk to the facility doing the print. all they want is clean separations for their screen printing/ foil transfers, which technically means they mostly care about your paths being consistently filled and grouped. Genuine transparency is only needed if your white were to indicate an extra underprint, but that doesn't appear to be what you want here.

Mylenium