How do I 'Flatten' an Illustrator file?

[Ken Nielsen]

I have a logo I've been working on with lots of layers, and sub-layers and now I would like to collapse or 'flatten' everything into one layer for use as a logo without the encumbrance of the many layers it took to make this artwork. I've tried 'flatten' but that still keeps the layers and sub-layers. I'm not sure what else to try. I want what is on top to appear and layers below to be sandwiched down so everything looks like it is on the screen. In Photoshop, I would just flatten and get the result I am looking for on one layer, but in Illustrator, it's not cooperating the way I would like it to. I have converted all type to paths, so that is done.

Where do I go from here to get the 'flattened' file I am after?

TIA,

Ken

[Danny Whitehead.]

royd79955180 wrote:

Getting rid of layers in Illustrator or "flattening" is completely unnecessary.

Turn that layers palette off and completely forget about it.

The only time you'll ever need to pay attention to layers is if you're using dielines or reference drawings, etc.

FORGET THE LAYERS. They mean nothing for your logo project.

Save your file as an .EPS and drop it into your project or send it to your client. DONE.

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ADDENDUM - For your reference, I find Photoshop to be the absolute BEST program for ad layouts. I've been doing this for over 20 years, and Photoshop is fluid, responsive and gives you realtime results. AND you can work in layers that you can understand. Just paste your logo into your ad as a "Smart Object" and you can scale it up and down forever as you're building your ad. Unless your ad has MASSIVE amounts of copy, stick with Photoshop for layout... you'll be so much happier and your work will go much much faster.

Yikes.

[royd79955180]

Luke Skywaker: "I dont believe it... "

Yoda: "That is why you fail."

[K´mo]

There is a long discussion here but I go back to the original question.

If you don't want that all objects are showed in layers palette (the grouping is good enough in my opinion), you could make a symbol from your logo. Select all elements and drag it to Symbols-palette and create new symbol. Change the Export type to Graphic and name it Logo or something. Then you have only one element visible in layers. However, if you have trasparency included, I'm not sure how that will behave but you can try this.

[Monika Gause]

K´mo schrieb:

There is a long discussion here but I go back to the original question.

If you don't want that all objects are showed in layers palette (the grouping is good enough in my opinion), you could make a symbol from your logo. Select all elements and drag it to Symbols-palette and create new symbol. Change the Export type to Graphic and name it Logo or something. Then you have only one element visible in layers. However, if you have trasparency included, I'm not sure how that will behave but you can try this.

Transparency won't be a problem and the Export type doesn't need to be changed.