Creating a Logo Background in Adobe Illustrator Using JavaScript

Today, my team was working on options for creating a backdrop like you see at red carpet events or press conference with repeating logos. In our case, we wanted something our graduates could stand in front of at a commencement ceremony to take photos with their families.
One of our designers spent a lot of time manually positioning various sizes and colors of our logos to try out how different patterns might look work, and I thought this would be a perfect time to apply programming to get it just right and be able to iterate quickly. Thankfully Adobe has a great scripting library for doing just this sort of thing.

The Code

To make this work, open up Illustrator, create a new 16’x8′ document, make sure you have two images (JPG, SVG, AI, or anything Illustrator can understand) in the directory, then run the following script (File->Scripts->Other Script).

/*************************
Creates a repeating pattern of images on Illustrator
For a logo wall on a 16' x 8' area
John Dyer (http://j.hn/ 2016)
MIT license
**************************/
// variables/settings
var
	xRepeat = 9, // how many times the first logo will show on the top row (1 less for the second one)
	yRepeat = 5, // how many rows down
	xPadding = 0, // space from left and right edge (0 for bleed)
	yPadding = 400,	// space from top and bottom
	item1Width = 650, // size in Illustrator units
	item2Width = 400, // size in Illustrator units
	item1Filename = 'DTS.seal.white.ai',
	item2Filename = 'DTS.logo.white.ai';
/// DO THE APP
if (typeof app != 'undefined') {
	runScript();
}
function runScript() {
	var
		// current document
		doc = app.documents[0],
		// add a new layer for our stuff
		layer = doc.layers.add(),
		// script file
		thisFile = new File($.fileName),
		basePath = thisFile.path,
		rootDir = basePath.replace('%20',' ') + '/';
		// open files for calculations
		file1 = new File(rootDir + item1Filename),
		item1 = layer.groupItems.createFromFile( file1 ),
		item1Ratio = item1.height / item1.width,
		item1Height = item1Width * item1Ratio,
		file2 = new File(rootDir + item2Filename),
		item2 = layer.groupItems.createFromFile( file2 ),
		item2Ratio = item2.height / item2.width,
		item2Height = item2Width * item2Ratio,
		// calculate image sizes and offsets
		largestHeight = Math.max(item1Height, item2Height),
		largestWidth =  Math.max(item1Width, item2Width),
		item1xOffset = largestWidth/2 - item1Width/2,
		item1yOffset = largestHeight/2 - item1Height/2,
		item2xOffset = largestWidth/2 - item2Width/2,
		item2yOffset = largestHeight/2 - item2Height/2,
		// calculate gaps
		docWidth = doc.width,
		docHeight = doc.height,
		xGap = (docWidth-largestWidth-xPadding*2) / (xRepeat-1),
		yGap = (docHeight-largestHeight-yPadding*2) / (yRepeat-1);
	// remove the images used for sizing
	item1.remove();
	item2.remove();
	layer.name = 'Fun new pattern';
	// main loop
	for (var x=0; x < xRepeat; x++) {
		for (var y=0; y < yRepeat; y++) {
			// check for the end of the row so we don't create too many
			var do1 = true;
			var do2 = true;
			if (x == xRepeat -1) {
				if (y % 2 == 0) {
					do1 = false;
				} else {
					do2 = false;
				}
			}
			if (do1) {
				var item1 = layer.groupItems.createFromFile( file1 ),
					item1x = xPadding + (x * xGap) + (y % 2 == 0 ? xGap/2 : 0) + item1xOffset,
					item1y = - (yPadding + (y * yGap) + item1yOffset);
				item1.name = 'logo1 ' + x + 'x' + y;
				item1.width = item1Width;
				item1.height = item1Height;
				item1.position = [item1x, item1y];
			}
			if (do2) {
				var item2 = layer.groupItems.createFromFile( file2 ),
					item2x = xPadding + (x * xGap) + (y % 2 != 0 ? xGap/2 : 0) + item2xOffset,
					item2y = - (yPadding + (y * yGap) + item2yOffset);
				item2.name = 'logo2 ' + x + 'x' + y;
				item2.width = item2Width;
				item2.height = item2Height;
				item2.position = [item2x, item2y];
			}
		}
	}
}

The Results

Here’s a few patterns we created. You can vary the logos, sizes, and spacing to make it work as needed.