Fan of creative technology, elearning, instructional design and a little geeky

Benjamin Day

January 16, 2007 Leave a Comment Written by Cari Jansen

History is interesting, and when someone on one of the many email lists to which I subscribe recently asked how to create Benday Dots. My first thought was “what the heck are Benday Dots”? So I ended up doing what most of us do today, when we want to know something: I did an internet search — or should I say I “googled”….

Little did I know that these dots were named after Benjamin Day, who invented a shading technique based on use of similar sized dots, that could be used in colour printing. Or that I actually worked with Benday dots back in the dark ages, when using screen sticker sheets and scalpel to apply tints to line-art drawings. Or that I saw Benday dots at the Guggenheim museum in New York 27 years ago…, when standing face to face with one of Roy Lichtenstein’s artworks.

I’ve dedicated the two digitips to working with Benday dots in Illustrator CS2.

Adobe Illustrator
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