How can I increasingly widen group of objects in Illustrator

Question

I have a set of objects that are all the same width, and are arranged in a vertical line. I want to start at the bottom one and make the gradually get wider as you go up the stack. I would like the to widened from the center keeping them all on the same vertical axis.

The image shows 6 objects (cards) the bottom 57 objects are evenly stacked vertically on top of eachother. The top 3 are spaced out.

I thought I could make merge all of these objects into one and then widen the top plane but that does not seem to be working.

I am trying to give them a slight perspective.

How can I do this?

Answer 1

Try selecting just the bottom and top instance of the card and using the Blend function: Object>Blend>Make. Then you can adjust the size of the top card as well as the spacing of the elements or just the number of instances.

Answer 2

This might be a bit tricky to do with this many cards bunched together so tightly, but you could do it manually using the Distrubite command:

• Holding down Option+Shift drag a copy of the bottom card slightly to one side. This will be a 'burner' card.
• Now, spaced vertically between each card, copy your burner card, but each time add an extra burner (this may be tricky wsith them bunched together so tightly). You should end up with something like this (I've added more vertical space to this example to make it a bit clearer):

• Next, select all of these cards and, using the Align palette, apply Vertical Distribute Space (if this button isn't visible on your Align palette, you may need to click the drop-down in the top-right and select 'Show Options'). You should get something like so:

• Now, drag a selection box around the burner cards and delete them.

Hope this helps!