Designing a Cover page

Thank you

Tinotendame,

As far as I can see, the Kentsbridge page is made of three sets of objects (which can all be on the same Layer):

A) At the bottom: The background consisting of the logo, the wording, and the colouring in the form of the black box and the isometric pattern which extends all the way to the right; all made as vector artwork/fonts.

B) In the middle: The set of photos.

C) At the top: A masking set produced from highly regular/irregular parts made by a combination of concentric circles and parts of rays, showing parts of the individual photos and letting the colouring at the bottom show through the gaps/knockouts between the photo parts.

The creation of the masking set C) is crucial, and you can move the photos B) about beneath the masking set C) for best fit, and you can move A) and B) together on top of the background A).

Fundamentally, for the creation you will have to work with concentric circles, which can be done in different ways.

You can start with a Polar Grid with no radial dividers so you just have the circles, or you can start by creating one circle and then offset it to get the basic circle shapes in the bottom half. Note that there are different kinds of transitions to circle shapes that are offset outwards in the topmost part, with the addition that there seems to be an inward offset to the very right, and with the addition that the transition on both sides of the photo of the woman is gradual rather than stepwise. In other words, only some of the circular parts correspond to the regularity of a Polar Grid/the same offset everywhere.

The radial gaps/knockout parts are rays, in other words they widen outwards, which can be seen clearly in the thicker ones, most of them are different, and none of them are flush. You can create each ray by starting with a full ray from the centre out and only use the relevant part of it.

Obviously, if "following exactly this kind of design on this link" is to be taken less than literally, things can be simplified a bit; but it is quite manageable to make everything, including the gradual transitions.

After creating the parts described, I believe the most straighforward way to finish is to:

1) Get rid of the gaps/knockout parts; you can use outline stroke and then the shape builder or pathfinders to end up with only the relevant final part, then delete the gaps/knockout parts;

2) Turn the remaining (more or less) circular parts into compound paths, one for each photo;

3) Select each compound path along with the corresponding photo and Ctrl/Cmd+7 (Clipping Mask/set);

4) Adjust the appearance by moving each photo about (select it without selecting the Clipping Mask, you can do that in the Layers panel) until it looks its best, and if needed you can move the whole set of Clipping Masks/sets on top of the background.

Whatever you do, avoid spelling errors like the Name in the wording.

The ring of images is the specific part in this. You can create this using the polar grid tool. Like so:

1. Create the ring

2. Outline strokes

3. Fill the gaps with shapebuilder

4. Rotate the shapes

5. Put iamges into the shapes.

See a video: https://youtu.be/nFsxIkJvWn0 In the video I have to undo once because I didn't hit the center when rotating.

WHen working with the polar grid tool while the mouse is still pressed you can use the up and down, left and right arrow keys to control the number of lines. Press Alt to create it from the center, press Shift to make a perfect circle.