Digital to print: converting the Telewest Broadband icons

Telewest Broadband use 3 illustrations to identify their 3 main products: Digital TV, Internet and Telephony. These were created by The Euro Agency and feature heavily thoughout our websites and banner campaigns.

The 3 section icons in 2d. The original files are vectors.

The brief required us to draft 3d style versions of the above. Whilst usually straightforward, the new images were needed for a printed instruction manual which is issued to our self install customers and hence needed to be in vector format.

Throughout the design process it was necessary to keep in mind that we would probably have to trace or draw the graphics in Adobe Illustrator, possibly from scratch.

After importing the spline data for each of the illustrations into 3ds Max, we produced initial designs as raster images. This was straightforward enough and we sought design sign off from the client before continuing.

With sign off attained we continued with the more labour intensive stage of the project, that of redrafting the above images into vector lines using Adobe Illustrator.

After some trial and error, we found that in order to extract a clean vector line from 3ds Max it was necessary to export the renders as swf files and import these into Adobe Illustrator. In truth, these were not full bezier curves, they were actually individual straight line objects arranged into the necessary formation. They were, however, suitable for the final print versions.

With the outlines sat on the top layer, we created the series of filled gradient shapes underneath to give the impression of a solid object as per the signed off raster illustrations.