Striped background

You can download the finished eps file here background.zip

Step 1

Open Illustrator and make a document, I have used a square here but use whatever shape best meets your needs (mine is 400x400 pixels). Then using the rectangle tool (M) click on the background anywhere and a dialog box will appear and enter the dimensions of your document i.e. 400x400 pixels. Now with the shape selected you have just created fill it with a Linear gradient (G) from top to bottom (you can do this by simple clicking at the top of the box and dragging down or by changing the “angle” to 90 degrees within the gradient window). Now click in the center of the gradient slider between the black and white colour tabs, a new tab will appear, change the location of this tab to 50% and its colour to 100% magenta and 100% yellow. Click on the black and white tabs in turn and change each one to 100% magenta, 100% yellow and 50% black.  Ok we are nearly there, you will see two diamonds on top of the gradient slider, these control where on the slider the two adjacent colours blend together, change the left one to 25% and the right on to 75%. Your image should like the one below.

Step 2

Select the background with the selection tool (V) and “copy and paste in front”, grab the node on the left hand side in the middle whilst also holding the “alt” key drag it into the middle of the document. Ok now change the colour of the tabs on each end of the gradient you have just created increasing the black to 80%. You need to create a stripped effect using the gradient you have created, you can do this simply by holding down the “alt” key whilst dragging the gradient and then resizing it to create a random effect. Do this a couple of times to create the effect below.

Step 3

Step 3 is just the same as step 2 but increasing the tab on each end of the gradient slider to 100%.

Step 4

Step 4 again is straight forward just copy step 3/4 but this time changing the colour to white on the central tab. Obviously the colours can be adjusted to suit your needs.

You can download the finished eps file here background.zip