Dotted spiral with proportionally increasing dots - BUT same distance between borders of dots

Question

I'd like to create a dotted spiral with progressively larger dots, exactly like the one shown in the picture below or also in this tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmd1wBNE7P0

However, the problem with this spiral is, that the distance between the dots is bigger for smaller dots than for the larger dots (the distance between the edges of the dots becomes smaller from the inside to the outside). Larger dots can even overlap. This is not what I want.

What I would like to have is similar distances between the BORDERS of the dots, independently if the dot is large or small. In other words: the smallest point should be the same distance from the second smallest point - as the largest point is from the second largest point. I hope you are understanding my issue.

How can I do that? Any creative solution is HIGHLY appreciated (brushes? blending tool seems not to work for this case, photoshop vector solution, etc...)

Your help / links to tutorials is very highly appreciated! Many thanks for your support and best regards, Silvan

Answer 1

I'm not sure how accurate and flexible it is, but following method worked for me. But you'll need to experiment depending upon the size of dots you want, length of your spiral and size variation you want. So you might need to try a few times so it gives you the desired results.

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You can manually create a brush with specified number of dots and size.

1. First you'll need to use Blend and Blend Tool to create copies of tiny circles. You can read about Blend options on official Adobe help guide, in case you don't know.

2. Expand it (you can create a copy first for a backup). Then you can make the space equal using Align panel (Horizontal Distribute Space).

3. Create your spiral.

4. Once done, create an Art Brush (with Scale Proportionately option) using the shapes you had created and use it on spiral. You should get the intended result.

Finally you can expand and change color. You can add stroke or offset path to the artwork, in case you feel the result is all okay but you need tiny size variation of each circle in the spiral.