Creating Geometric Patterns

1. Introduction: learn to make simple, beautiful geometric patterns using Adobe Illustrator with your a graphic designer, interior designer, fashion designer or someone that just like Patton's, this course will teach you the skills you need to create your own geometric patterns. In no time, join up and get started. 2. How to get the most from this course: I'm Peter Bone, a designer, writer and teacher. Great this course for anyone wanting to learn how to create precisely repeating geometric patterns. It's suitable for beginners as well as more experienced illustrating users. But there will be quite a steep learning curve, as we'll need to get to the fine details of how to align objects precisely in order for these types of patterns. Toe work. I'll be using illustrate two cc on a Mac, but you can use any version of illustrator, whether on Mac or PC, and finally, you get the most from the course if you work through it from the beginning and you complete the exercises. So thanks for having a look at this course. I very much hope you'll join up. 3. Set up, basic patterns, transforming: in this video, we can look at how to create a simple pattern. How to transform that pattern had his art boards so that you can see a large on a small version of your patent at the same time and how to make patterns appear better on screen. So, firstly, if you create yourself a new document, so you see, these are the settings I've previously used 100 by 100 millimeters. I'd recommend you do the same as me to keep it simple. So 100 by 100 millimeters. It's important. I would suggest that she start from the print preset and then changed to 100 by 100 because we're gonna have to get very accurate into the line of things up. One thing I suggest you make sure is not switched on. Is this one here a line New objects, the pixel grid that's really is for from Web designers but really not used for the tour when creating patterns, so make sure that remains switched off and then press OK, so this document has won our board in it, which is the size specified, but you can see the finish. One has got to so the reason I got layers. It's so that I can click on this and see almost like a full screen version and see what that really looks like, as opposed to seeing them both together, as opposed to seeing just like one. So I mean, some people shortcuts here with show explain in a minute. But firstly, how to do that? So there's our first workspace not to z amount a little bit. If you're on a Mac do command minus the command minus key on the PC control minus to see mount like that, you might then want to use your hand tool. Justo, reposition that over there somewhere and then use the artful tool the one above it click and drag roughly the same shape. Is your screen something like that than to check how close that is to the shape of your screen? I would recommend you do command or control zero. So command on the Mac control on the PC, and you should get it looking something like that. It tries to fit it to the screen. So in my case, you can see that my artwork do with being a bit wider, so just use the same tools and I'll grab that right hand handle. Make it a bit more shape. I want my same on this side and try again. So control or command zero that's starting to look better. So if I really wanted to tweet that, what I would do is do Commodity Patrol minus to zoom out. Users are bored. Tool that drag this one a bit further away. Look back on this one. Make it a bit bigger and then go back to CA Model Control zero. That looks pretty good. So I've now got a kind of full screen preview. So Commander Control zero that that's the shortcut for fit our boarding window. But the other shortcut was using With this one, it's a command or control all zero, which is fit all in window. In other words, fit all our boards in the window. So that's the shortcut I was using to swap between looking at this one. Come on, control zero, These two ca model control and old and zero. Okay, so with set up, Sinise, get back to the selection to away from the outboard toe. So the selection tool click on this art board and do command or control zero. So we're gonna make a pattern on the way we're gonna do. It is we're going to. This is about creating geometric shapes and lines, but just to make it easy to start with, which used the rectangle tool. So click on the rectangle tool. Before we do anything with it in the View menu, make sure that smart guys are on. They should be. That's the default and then notices you line up on the edge of the pages should say Page in purple, which means it's gonna be snapping to that. It's a click and drag something like that again, it should say Page bottom, right? Have you can just about see that it's like is merely a default color so white? Fill on black stroke. If you're new to illustrator, you'll need to learn about this so we need to change the stroke. That's the line around the edge. We don't want that. So click on that to bring it to the front and press this little button here, the none button. Okay, that's changed the stroke to none, and then bring the filled the front. I notice when you do that certainly in the last few versions of Illustrator. It brings this color panel in my opens up, which isn't that good for for most people. But in our case, because we're using just black and white, that's that's fine. So we'll click on the black Watch that. Okay, so next up again with the rectangle tool, line up another rectangle a bit wider. Now we will be working in black and white, but just so you can see what's happening here, click on any color here that clashes with with the black. Let's say yellow now because we just created this on top of the other one, only to send that to the bag. So that's object. Arrange sent back. So now with my selection tool, I'm gonna click here, keep my mouse button down, drag through to select both of those objects That is that both selected. If I want to line them up, press this button here to line them up equally, and then open up the swatches panel on this, both still selected. So with your selection toe drag one of those and that they should both move and let him go inside the swatches panel and you have created your first patterns. Watch. You can just about see it here, so that looks like it all I know. But let's see how it works. So having learned that shortcut come out of control or zero, we can both frames by frame. Sorry about our ports. Now use the rectangle. So line up on this art board That should show me that it's lined up, but it isn't the mind. I'm gonna click and drag bring it across like that. And now I want to change the fill color to this noose watch that we made so comparing what we got here and what we had over there, you'll notice that there's no white gap here, so we didn't put anything here. We only leader, the only real objects. And the reason why I made a yellow is so you can see a bit more clearly. What's what's happening. So basically, the gap between the black lines in the pattern is the wit the total width of this yellow. Basically, what it does is it repeats. So when we run out of room there, we go back to the beginning, so never repeat on and on and on. So this point, if you're trying this and you want to create the other color and make it different, I would simply select the yellow. She is a different swatch, so seeing us watches are open. You could pick, read, for example, and again with your selection tool drag to select on both and then drug and again drop in the sorts of panel. And now you would simply click on this one and you could click to play. That's watch instead. So in my case, I'm sticking simply to black and white. In your case, I'd encourage you toe. Try experimenting with different colors and for your first bit of homework, I'm gonna want you to create a very simple Patton. But choose a couple of colors. But before that, that's something else that you're like. If you haven't worked with patterns before, or even if you have, you might not have discovered this, which is to change my pattern from this to that. I've taught many people in the past that that uses sort of approach, and they've had to create lots of multiple different pants to make this work. But it's really much simpler than you might imagine firstly, to make that black and white, of course, I'm gonna just like this background rectangle white dry across them both drug it in there, Select that apply it. Okay, that's the easy bit. And now to you I have come across is the rotate to Let's double click on that and you will notice that the rotator wants to rotate something. No great surprise there. Notice it's going to transform the object i e. Thea the rectangle on the pattern inside the rectangle. What we want, though, is to not transform the object. So just the pattern. So look at that. So without the need to create a separate patents watch, we can rotate that pattern. Now it's said it's done 45 because I've clearly done this before and it's remembered what I wanted to do. But if I want to drag this round, you can see I can experiment with whatever settings I like. So I kind of preferred 45. So Glinka with 45 and if you turn preview off and then back on again, that's gonna work great. Similarly, you can double click on this scale panel scale panel, the scale tool and you can just the numbers here. My suggestion here would be when you hit your up arrow. We're down there on the keyboard, having highlighted the uniforms. Guy, you can see it's gonna stretch it if you want to move more quickly, it with a shift key Health down. Okay. And finally, something technical for you, you might notice. My patterns are generally quite smooth. There's no gaps between them. This is how it should look in illustrator. But to be honestly, there's a setting that, uh, you'll find in preferences that might help this. So if you go on the Mac Illustrator Preferences General on the PC, Edit Preferences General. Either way, what the professor would normally on is this one anti alias artwork. The idea of anti A list artwork is to make things appear smoother on the screen, which works great for many things. So, for example, in photo shop, anti alias selections and type works really, really nicely on screen. But I think like patterns, it actually, as you'll see, will tend to make it worse. Can you see these gaps here? So this is because of anti alias ing, so if yours solely creating patterns for print. Then it really doesn't matter about anti Alias, and you would that Gap will know up here when it prints. But if the patterns you're making are to go on screen, then you want to do what I did, which is going to preferences General and switch off anti releasing. Okay, so we've looked at pricing, Uh, what I keep saying workspace when I meant to say our board. So to art boards using the our portal, having created a new document and then making use of the swatches panel, the color panel, the rectangle tool creating patterns and rotating and scaling patterns before changing the anti releasing preferences. 4. Create & transform a simple pattern: So if your homework after this first exercise is to create, well, firstly, decide if you want to use multiple colors or not. If you're happy using black and white, just stick with black and white and create a pattern or patterns much like this. So simple one. But then try transforming it in different ways. But if you want to use colors, then ah, even though I won't be, what you could do is, let's say, pick background color like that one, and then go up to the color guide and then use that as a guy to find some other colors he might want to work with. You can pick all manner of interesting combinations. So, for example, for something quite subtle you might choose monochromatic on. If you like these options here, you just simply press just the middle. If we this little button here that adds the colors Dior Swatch panel down here so I could know experiment with maybe that color on this color, Maybe that's a bit too subtle. Let's try that. That might look quite nice. So then I dragged in. I could just apply that. You might notice that, of course, having rotated apartment scale that as you did before, he remembers that. So all you're doing here is changing the colors. But of course, if you want to get back and transform the pans more than that, feel free to do that. So again, if you want homework and if you want toe, try different colors, different shades. Try that and make use of the color guide up here to help you do that. Pleased to see what you end up with. 5. Using a grid & the pen tool: So in this video, we are going to be using a grid to help line things up. And we're gonna be creating lines as well as rectangles. So you can see here, we've got the finished one on the right, and then we've got one that I'm gonna kind of copy to help keep me on track. And we got a spare our port as well. So on a click on the spare outboard and do command control zero maybe just is a matter little bit so you can see that this is the the one that I'm copying from. But there's a feature that used to create this, and that's in the view, many and it's the grid. So show grid, Alice, you mine itis the grid. It's designed to line up to the art boards and break it up in a way that you might specify . There's a couple of issues here. Firstly, and I left this in because this might happen to you when you show the grid. It might be that your art board isn't quite lined up to it. So first I'm gonna do is make sure that the great is a useful size. So It was no accident that I deliberately made my art boards 100 by 100 because, as you can imagine, that's a nice easy number toe divide by. So if you would account here you discover this 10 lines across and 10 down. So coming a so ah 100 divided by 10 is 10. So what I want is so my grid to be broken up into tens. So the way I would do that all the way did it was to go into preferences so illustrated preferences on Mac edit preferences on a PC and then go to guides and grid. You can see I've done this already. You can see that it says grid line every 10 millimeters subdivisions of one. That means that between those lines, there isn't any extra. Maybe later we might throw some more. So if you've done the same as me and you've created a document where your main up well, but you're working on 100 millimeters, then you want to break up the grid line every 10 millimeters. I've also change my color of my grid from the default, which is a light blue color to red, because I hope that would be easy for you to see. So you can do that too, if you want to. So that's setting up the grid. Hopefully, when you do that, your art Borbon line up like this one does, but the chances are in might line up like this one doesn't actually, that's not line up it all. So organ, Dave because actually make use of the snap to grid feature. So in my mind, snap to grid on the grid combined can be very, very useful for certain types of work not for all, by any means, but for certain times work. They really, really help. So try this. So in the view menu, choose show grid and then also in the view menu. Then you choose snap to grid. So with that done, when I got my heart brought up here and noticed that it is 100 by 100 which is just what you want now, that's gonna be useful because I'm now going to snap is in you. Notice it now snaps of the grid, but clearly at the wrong size. So now I can snap it back out again. So I think that's that side fixed and did the same thing here in this corner. Bring it in. We'll have really ruined that. I've inadvertently made a new outboard, so I'm gonna just under that they didn't realize I was trying to grab this one. So maybe a bit more careful. Have you got pull it in, Put it back out again. Notice the width is now 100. That's perfect. The height isn't quite right. So Oh, crab that snap it in and snap it out again. I might need to do the same on the bottom, so I realize this is tedious, but it is all about this being accurate. So there we go. So this up board now snaps. So that's hopefully what yours would have done automatically. But if not, that's how you fix it. Okay, So onwards. So you can pretty see how this is done. I'm thirsty using my rectangle tool again because snap to grid is on. It's gonna behave quite differently now, But what you can do is you can start to use the grids in an interesting way. You can sort of count the number of square, that sort of thing on, so that should snap nicely There we go. You might be to see how that's working, so it's snapping accurately, So that's good. I just need toe change the fill color. So the strict Cullerton none on the fill color black and then over to my pen. Tal. I'll click once there to start the line should snap nicely, trying to help it along. But notice it's the idea is that only snaps on the grid lines. Not quite sure that's lined up. We'll find out in a minute and then back to my selection tool to de select and then back. So basically, I do one of these lines at a time. So it was a starting this finish. I gotta go back to the selection tool on day Select now. There are short cuts to help you around this. I'm not going to throw them in right now, but I will in a later video. So if you know that that's fine, you can use them so with the selection tool again, will de select. So now if I just hide the guides for a minute, hide the grid. Sorry, You can see that those thin lines are there. I want to make him a bit second, so dragged through all three of them. I'll make the stroke. Wait, let's say to point to start with, maybe increased that little bit now because I turned off the anti alias ing. That's great in some respects, but it doesn't help make these lines. Looks move. So for him to look smooth on screen, they really got to be absolutely lined up. Now, you might be thinking when I would've thought Illustrated would have taken care of that, what with a grid and everything. And the answer is, it probably should have done. But I'm afraid it doesn't always work, but sometimes it gets confused with the with the edge of on our board. So I'm gonna show you a very sort of geeky way of fixing this. But it's it's worth you knowing. So I'm gonna go to my white arrow to called The direct selection to the idea here is that you can de select on Click on just one anchor point notice. This one here is selected notices. Solid blue solid blue, whereas it's one down here, which is not selected, is hollow. So, in other words, the one of the bottom is not selected. The one at the top is now. I did warn you this was geeky. If you look at the X value, that's the value across the page. It's Ah, an easy to remember minus 349.603 millimeters. What I want you to do is click on that about three times and then do command or control, see to copy that value. Now, keep your eye on that. My guess is when I click on this anchor point here, yes, the numbers changed. Not much, but a little bit. So this is the sort of geeky way that you can line things up if you want to be absolutely accurate. So if I again click three times and then paste So Commander Control V when I hit return. As you might see, that's now perfectly lined up. So you repeat that sequence here, so three click to select it. Control. Come on, Seat copy. Click on this one. At the bottom three clicks. Tomato control V three clicks Tomato control. See three clicks. Come on. A control V. So I do feel your pain. I realize that's awkward and tricky, but you're here to learn how to do accurate geometric stuff on. This is what you might need to call on sometimes. So we needed that. But if you look at the finished one, it's got a square in the background, too, and that square's white, so we don't have to have a white background on it. But that would mean that it's see through. So my recommendation here is that we turned the grid back home, and usar rectangle tool line up with this line up will wear long like that. Now this is giving us a white square, which is actually what we want. But because it's the newest thing, it's in front of everything else said to send it backwards to the back of all the other things you would say object, arrange send to back just so you can see the one creating is different from the one you got over there. I'll just change the color of that. Let's just make that se a a really light shade of gray. Okay, so now with my selection tool, I'm gonna select all of those unless, you know, by now, track, create a pattern that I'm gonna do command old zero gonna hide the grid and then click on this, finished one and replace it with the one that I've just made. And as you can see, that works perfectly. So he made use of a few things there. We use the grid, we snap to grid and we'll use the numbers that appear when you click on individual anchor points that you got with the direct selection to 6. Create a more complex pattern: So if you got some homework on this one, try this. You cut your original pattern, which which works nice and simply what I've done here. I've kept the elements exactly same. It's just I've changed the colors and I've also made this straight weight slightly thicker . So rather than just using black and white, I'm introducing different shades of gray Notice what a difference that makes their Maybe not for the better. Notice how your eyes drawn in a completely different direction, sort of around these central bits. So notice that the great kind of faded back on, the more contrast kind of comes forward. The contrast is really important in patterns. And I'm not saying this is better than this one. I kind of prefer this, but notice where eyes drawn So a late experiment using different shades. So you got all these different shades of gray here. If you want to. Of course, you can use colors that makes it slightly more complex, but still notice where the contrast draws your eye. And, of course, the other thing you might experiment with is the weight of the strokes here. So you can see I've just very subtly changed that from this one, so just made a bit sicker, but you could go a bit further without. And if you know more about stroke opens an illustrated you could you could use those. So try that, Andi, Just spend some time that just to get usedto uh, how patterns can kind of shift unexpectedly when you just make the tiniest change. So again, please do experiment on. If you got anything that you like, please upload it to the project area. 7. Combining patterns using layers: in this video, we're gonna look at how you can combine patterns. And if you're gonna do that, how you might make use of layers to help you do that. So, firstly, back to the first thing that he did, you can see we created this simple pattern and we had basically two rectangles. One was black and the one underneath with white. What I'm gonna do is change this one so that the film is none now realize that doesn't look any different. And that's that's fine. Drug on both into swatches. And just make sure you apply that noose watch. Really? It looks absolutely no different. Then what I want you to do is open up the layers panel. Now the layers panel Is this one here Now, last. Maybe if you haven't done much with illustrator, they more complex than you've come across by now and normally wouldn't encourage people to use them. But I think you'll realize that this is this is possibly quite useful because we're gonna show you can use it as a kind of on off switch if you like. It's everything we've done so far is on line one. Just semen on that so you can see it clearly. Layer one. What I want you to do is duplicate low one. So you've got allow one and all that, too. On the easiest way to do that is drag that onto that icon there, the one to the left of the waste basket that's now called layer one copy and then click on this space here next to the original layer one. And that locks that layer. So that means that we won't be able to do anything on the original liar. You might notice this layer here is highlighted, meaning that we're working on this one. So the moment you won't see really any difference, because both layers are exactly the same. We've got, like, two versions of the same thing we can do, though, is we can select this one. What have we do? This is still the original is still underneath. So the benefit of that you'll see in a minute in a select this Patton and we're gonna double click on the right A to, and you will get a sense of this. Now I'm rotating it. We got this interesting cross hatching appearing because we're transforming the pattern and the object. But let's turn off transform objects you can see with that 45 degrees going on basically got to patterns one on top of the other. The one on the top has got a background of none, which means we can see through it to the other one underneath. So basically, you can play around with this. You can adjust these numbers toe whatever you like. I'm gonna stick with 45 in the preview off, turn it back on again and then press OK. Beauty of layers is now. I could turn that off. That layer is hidden, and then we can see what has we have before we can turn it on and we combine them. So if I wanted to take that further, and I suspect if I do, it's probably gonna ruin it. But if I drag this layer onto the icon again to make another copy, I could then lock the second layer, then making sure that I'm back on the 1st 1 with my selection tool click on this one. And then again, I could rotate so I could rotate. You might start with zero and then just slowly. That's around, so I'm reluctant ready to do this? I don't think I'm gonna get anything on the looks any better, so I'm gonna cancel that. But instead I could do, let's say double click on the scale tool you saw before. You can hold down, shift and go up, put down. It's getting kind of complicated, and it might be useful. It might not be. I'm starting to think here that that could be quite interesting. Especially if maybe I now double click with potato right at 45 degrees. Say, you might think Goodness me, that was much better to start with. And, you know, you may well have a point, but I want to show you the idea here that you can get really complex things going on. Just taking one pattern on making multiple copies, ideally a multiple layers. And then once you've done that for a little bit, you can kind of compare and contrast. You could say, Well, have that option. We had that option with this one, and this one look like what would this one on this one looked like? What would this one on this one? That, like so many options that you can play with. So there we go. So we made use off the wait for it. None. Swatch? No, Phil. We've made use of layers duplicating layers on again. We made use of thes transform tools. 8. Create a combination of patterns: So if you'd like to do some homework here, what I'd like to get you to try to do is to create one or two or maybe in three patterns with backgrounds that that haven't got any filling them and try overlaying them in the same way that you've just done so. Use multiple layers, used the scale and rotate options. But then the other thing that you could do is so far, we've just used the same pattern. So this is an example of the same pattern. But you could use different patterns so you could deliberately create two different patterns or three different patterns. So you've got many, many options to try, so you keep it simple. You could make it complicated. You could keep it black and white. You could use shades of gray. You could use colors. I'd be really interested to see what you come up with. 9. Using transformations: in this video, we're gonna create this pattern which, as you can see, is a bit more complex and certainly more geometric than earth. And we've done so far. So there's a bit of work today, So just in terms of what we're gonna be covering, we'll use the pen again, Will use the grid again. We're going to use this scale tool in a slightly different way. So I'm going to start on this blank art board here. I'm gonna turn the great own notice snapped. Agrees on notice also that smart guys air off smart guides whilst they generally useful that can sometimes clash a little bit with working with the grid. So that's why I switched those off So I can see from this finished one that I've actually got three lines. They're drawn with a pencil. You can see how they snap to the grid. Notice also, if you're relatively new to illustrator that to select this line, I have to click right in the middle. So this is sort of where the anchor points are and notice the way to the stroke is 57 point . That's the same with all three of those. So let me create that for you. So with my pencil now, if the smart guys run, it would tell me that it's gonna snap. But because the great is only should just snap anyway, it's looking good. Okay, so that's that one. Now, I didn't tell you the short cut in the previous video because we want to do now is de select. So when I start here, it doesn't draw a line, doesn't keep going. So the way I would do that that the long way around is to go over to the selection tool, click de select and then continue. So I suppose that have done that I might will continue. But next time, I'll show you a short cut. So the pencils were only to count the number of lines in So one, 234 in So one, 234 in. You'll notice. By the way, the as to risk their next of the pan tells me I'm starting a new line, which is exactly what I want. Looks good. If I had made a mistake, I would have simply done control Command said to undo. Okay, so now a short cut on a Mac hold down the command key. Some people call it the Apple key issue on a PC. Hold down the control key. Either way, with that key held down, click away so on something else and that temporarily gives you the last selection tool used . So in my case there, the black main selection to also want to get the mouse. I'm back again, and I'm gonna do something else. Noticed. The asterisk shows me are about to do a new line. So that's your shortcut. Okay, so finally, 2341234 That doesn't look entirely lined up to me. So what I might do here is show you another little trick, which is in the menu. Choose outlined mode. We're gonna zoom in a little bit. You can see this line really is not straight. So I can click on that, and I should be a dragon into place. Like should be snapping to the grid so it should sort itself out. I think you're noticing the key word there is, Should That's really not snap into the great, is that? There we go. It is there now. Okay. So as I said before, sometimes it gets a bit confused. Illustrator. When you're working at the edge of an art board, that's sort of how many's. But anyway. But some outline mode, as opposed to preview mode, noticed that shortcut. There is command or control. Why, Okay, so far, so good. So if I was toe, select that and drug in tow swatches, let me do that, Then, as you can see, we would have a pattern. Just turn the one off so you could see we've got a nice geometric pattern. That's a nice geometric pattern. I was just, uh, before, right? Finalized what I was going to do on this course. I just run some of these ideas by ah by my wife and she said, Well, that she looked at this one. I said, Well, yeah, I can see that it works, but I don't know why I would want to create that one's. I thought, like a fair point. Maybe that's not as beautiful as it could be. So this is why we're gonna make this a bit more interesting. So let's reapply the one that we are heading towards. There we go. Right. So how have I changed this into this one. So the first thing I need to do is to go to my preferences and guides and grid. We took briefly about subdivisions in an earlier video. We're gonna make that two now to give us a slightly finer grid. Let's look, it would go here. I'm gonna use the shortcut, which we just talked about to turn the grid on your notice. I've now got a full integrated next step is to select all these lines and double click on this scale tool. So, like we have before, double click on the scale to and I want you to type in 50% making sure that trance you can turn off transform patterns, so transform objects needs to be on scale. Strokes and effects need spill. That means that the scale of the lines in this case are made smaller. So as well as the objects making smaller than the lines gets more. That's exactly what we want. So press OK next to the selection tool and click carefully on this. I think a point notice state should all move together. If only one of them moves, you're gonna want to stop. Gonna want to line this one up here. So notice how by having that extra division of the grid that makes this work perfectly. So that's good. Now, just to keep those three things together a good place to do object in group. That means that when they'll stay together, what we want is one of these over here. Let's do that first. And then the kind of the opposite thing here in here. So firstly, double click on the right, a tool. So I've been 190 degrees and press copy looks a bit weird, I know. But back to the selection tool. Click carefully on this anchor point and drank all that up to the opposite position. So just one away from the corner. Hopefully, you can start to see where we're going with this double click again on the right, a tool, this time to 90 degrees and copy. And then with your selection tool, click on let's say this anchor point and just move it a little bit down here. You could start to see where we're going, so I hope that what you're kind of learning from this is two aspects that make illustrator really, really good for this one is the grid one? Is that the numbers for the angle? So it might be that you don't like the restrictions of working with numbers. You might not like the restrictions of working with the grid, and I realize it's not for everybody. But if you are trying to do things that are geometric, these are the, I think, the best tools. So Final one double click again again, 1 80 degrees on a copy and then with the selection to pick it up from one of the anchor points that should slot into place. That so we're nearly there now. In earlier videos, you see me create a background for this so I could create a white rectangle. Put it underneath. That's fine. It kind of depends whether you want it to be see through or not. One of the reasons I'm not doing it now is just to show you that when something effectively fills that hole space, then you don't really need a background, Ah, background element to that pattern. So the very 1st 1 we did, we needed that sort of extra white background or other colored background just to give a bit of space between the repeats here because it kind of fills the whole space. We don't need that. So let's drag this in and then let's apply it. It's just, yeah, you're not gonna notice a huge difference, I don't think. But now they go. So it looks almost the same as the one way or copying, which is exactly what we're after. So again using the grid, you in the pen but using the pen shortcut to de select, tweaking the grid to make it more useful on a slightly different use of scale and also rotate, we've ended up with a really nice geometric pan that I think even my wife would like. 10. Create a pattern using transformations: So if you'd like some homework to practice and reinforce what you've just learned in the last video, what I suggest you try is maybe a bit more complex. And then you're done so far is that in the same way that we've used the grid to create this pattern and then by making half the size we've created four of those which we've rearranged you could try creating a slightly different pattern that you can imagine would break. You could divide it into four and then rotate them around so it could be used diagonal lines. It could be used blocks of rectangles. Keep it relatively simple. Andi, just try, uh, playing around with his ideas and see what happens in this case. I think it works quite well because you've got a very strong contrast between the black and white. That's one of the reasons I'm amusing black and white. So you might want to just stick with that for the time being. But of course, feel free to do whatever direction you imagine takes takes you in. So please again, If you have got something you really like, please share it with everybody by uploading it to the project area of this course. 11. Create a classic chevron pattern: If you're looking for a classic geometric pattern here it is right in front of you. So it looks nice and simple, and it's beautifully simple, unfortunately, not that simple to create. So let's go have a look and see how it's done. So you'll notice here. I've got to kind of stages of things. That's to remind me how I How did this? So let's go over here and over. Look, I'm gonna turn the great own using the shortcut you learn Last time or view show grit, you'll notice that there's just one division that rather than two. So that's from Preferences Ingrid's so change that back from to in the previous video toe one. So if we look firstly, this is the start point, so you can see that I've got the's Chevron shapes and they're aligned perfectly and that they also got exactly same gap. So 1234 five, even five five gaps there so five grid lines. So let's firstly create that. So it's obviously much easier if you copying something that someone else has done. Just party will. I am doing it now and partly. Why am encouraging you to kind of play around this idea first. Now something I need to point out at this point if I just change back to the selection tool when you are doing this trans women, so you can see his word as possible. Notice here. Not what you might have. You might start off with a fairly narrow line, so then you'll need to increase the weight. So you might have noticed the white there was, I think 39 points. Just make it 40. Take the notch down. The other thing is you three different cap options and that is the 1st 1 That's what you're likely to have this one here. Can you see the difference here? The one on the left, the cap extends. The one that we're copying was one. We've created the captors No extend and notice the little white gap you would get. So if you look just to the writer where my cursor is, there would be a white gap, which is why we need that to extend out. So it's this button here gives you what's called a projected cap, and that is gonna make all the difference. Okay, so we got one of those rather than create the other ones manually. Get back to the selection tool. Make sure you've picked the anchor point. Hold on the old key. Notice that your cursor changes. Just a minute. She second see that so far down the orc, your curse would change. And when you see the black and white cursor, that means that rather than moving something, you're gonna be copying it. So go down the okay. Copy that. Trying it to line up. Just noticed that my cursor, they're both both curses. A white. That means that yes, I'm copying something, but also that it's gonna line up. I could just see that I'm lining up to their own place. Okay, that looks more like it. Okay, now, lovely trick. When you just made some sort of translation, let's say, moving something or copying something or a taking something. If you want to do the same thing again, you would do object, object, transform, transform again. So I've got eggs. The exact distance has been repeated. Having done that, I can see what you can play. I've seen before that I didn't quite get the gap, right. So I haven't quite drawing. The is the way I should have done. So There you go. There's some I'm gonna just have to go back and do that again. There we go. Right. Okay. Object transform. Transform again. Okay, so that is the first step. Now you always think him. Okay, So how does that relate? So this, you know, already that pattern is normally conniving, closed somehow sorts enclosing a square. And this is what we got here. So I know this looks a bit strange, but if you can imagine this repeating underneath, you'd have the these would appear at the top, and it would all line up and make a pattern. So that's basically what we're heading towards. So the way we're gonna do that is we kind of kind of cut this so that what we get is what's inside the square and we lose what's outside the square. That's a little bit fiddly. Just to make this a bit clear, I'm gonna get rid of these. So you mean a little more? First thing I'm gonna do is click and select all those objects. You can see that their lines, you can see that got beginnings and ends. They're technically known in the trade as open paths we're gonna do. Let's go object, puff and outline stroke. Well, that does. If I do that, as you can see now they look like kind of more like rectangles. These are no longer parts and no longer sorry there No, no got open path that they kind of filled the shapes of filled and notice how the stroke weight has disappeared. This is these are not regarded two strokes. So if you're gonna do this, it's probably What I should've said before is make a copy first so I could get back. I can undo, but, um, unless I make a spare copy, I might want to come back and tweak it, but it's a bit late after you after you've done that. But the reason I'm doing that is so that I can now get rid of bits that I don't want on. The way I'm gonna do that is create an accurate square that fills this entire What will be a pattern? Let's just do yourselves a favor and make that white. That's also send it to the back. So it's this area. Want to keep on? We want to get rid of everything outside the area. It's the way we do that is we select or the paths different ways you can do it. But what I'm going to suggest is pretty straightforward. You choose this tool here called the shape Build A To so everything is selected Noticed that when I hover over individual path there highlighted. So this one, for example, I want to dilate. It might be quite happy to see but notice how my Kurtz has a plus next to it. So that means that it would add that somehow actually want the opposite. I want to be deleted. So if I hold down the okay, can you see that it changes toe? Subtract So what I'll do or down the dorky click Once on there, that disappears and do the same for this one on this one on this one, then someone so everything outside the square gets deleted. So what we end up with is something that should effectively repeat. So when we run out of room here and it gets repeated down, which we have these just to give you an idea of what that will look like if I select it, hold down the okay and make a copy down here, you can see effectively how it's gonna work. So that is the idea of the repeat. Similarly, if I was toe make some more copies, you'd see that it works. So it's It's a kind of old school way of testing that a repeat works. And as you can see, it works pretty well, so that is effectively, what the pattern is doing. Stick wielder. If I don't completely mess it up by deleting the wrong things Oops, right, so less test whether it works by drinking that into their Let's just change that something else temporarily. It's what grid. And then when I apply the pattern I've just made, as you can see, there it is. So it's a classic Chevron pattern, nice and simple, not that simple to make them so to do it, we used the grid to start with counting. Either way, law will not that well, in my case. But then the trick Waas. Once you got those spaces equal and you worked out what will happen when it repeats, you've got to create that you were making use their of the shape builder tool to marital together. So having done that, I think you should possibly have a good arrest. So I'm not going to sit in any homework for this one. But Teoh keep practicing that cause It's clearly quite fiddly. 12. Using open and closed paths: this pattern is part of the most complex geometric pattern that we're gonna be putting together. Let's just have a slightly closer look at it. As we look at a detail, I want you to notice how, in terms of the open ends, that one there vertical one there and there's another one there. The rest of it all appears to join. Okay, so it repeats. So we got these open ends here, open ends here. The rest of it joins. Let's look at how that works. So this is the the pattern that kind of creates at what creates the pattern so you can see the open ends there and they're so this bit here, you know, it is kind of extends out. Where did that ends up joining with this one. So because this slightly have a labs when it's turned into it a repeat, this appears to join up. So if you're interested in doing these kind of patterns, my suggestion is you got to think about kind of the middle and the outside of the same time . So I got the best results when I started from the middle, worked outwards and then created this other element that kind of joined in. So you kind of need to think about where is gonna repeat. So the other elements here, if I go into outlined mode, you'll see is this square. So this is kind of the outside of it, and it's showing us how it's gonna repeat so that the whole thing gets repeated so you can see that the path that finished there just take a look at that one. College issues command, control. Why notice how this continues off? So we saw this earlier on that. You can have these extending and stroke ends out of the end there, and that's using the this kind of cap here. The what do they call it? Projecting Kappa. Think it was, Yeah, that one. So that's basically what's going on So you can see that the way I've done it is by using the grid, I'm not using the whole shape of the grand. I just sort of used elements of it made it made what useful I could. But then, in terms of the lying around the edge, if I just kind of see if I can grab that, you can see that I've gone slightly off the grid. So I was kind of experimenting with the preferences, using more subdivisions to help me line things up. And you'll notice here that this bottom line isn't on the grid. That's entirely deliberate, because really, what I was doing was having created that by making this bigger or smaller, I'm controlling the gap of hat repeats is this one repeat found Woods So But I did the 1st 1 which was maybe just lined up to here and they didn't quite look right. The gap wasn't quite right. So that just readjusted at and then created another one. So it may well take you a bit of work to do this, but I hope you can see that if you like, this kind of shapes the diametric shapes with lines. And I guess if you didn't, you probably wouldn't be doing this course and you wouldn't have got this far with it. But so make use of the grid on duh, but be prepared to move away from the grid on the command that you'd need to life for. That is in the view menu. I notice I've turned off snap to grid because if I don't turn off snap to grid and automatically that has to line up. So use that slightly with caution. But used that and also with these projecting lines, that is what creates that pattern. So I don't think you need to me to show you exactly how that's done because you can see the grid. You know, we're using the pen tal. You know, we're using the stroke panel. So, uh, best of luck without see how Ugo 13. Create a pattern using open & closed paths: if you'd like some homework to reinforce this. What I suggest you do is get some graph paper and try drawing out in pencil. So, my dears, you could do in illustrator, of course, to start with if you'd like to. But this is more about the idea than the execution. And try and think then, about where you want lines to be open at the end and when you want them to close and how the repeat might need to work. So the way I've done, As you can see, I've got to open lines and the rest of them close. So you might decide to have three open lines or four open lines or use your imagination so it might take a bit of work. The suggestion is to try and draw it out first and then try cravings and patents. And again, as ever, I'd love to see what you cannot with 14. Expanding & combining patterns: for a final video, we're gonna end up with something which I think is really gonna look fantastic. What we got here, though, is not really a pattern. What? It is four separate patterns. So we kind of cheating a bit weak reading one pattern. Transforming those Borg and end up with is turned that into a pattern, which is gonna look great. I think so. You know some of this already? I'm gonna just soon that a little bit so we can see what we're doing. I'm gonna turn there. Great zone. Also, make sure that snap to grid is on. I'm gonna use my rectangle tool, and I gotta just snap that, so I create, like, 1/4 now, I was just playing with this. Say, I've already got selected a simple pattern. So this is the very first pattern we created. If in your case, you end up with something else than just replace it with your patent like that. So just the nice, simple pattern. So as you can probably guess, what we're now going to do is double click on the right a tool. We're gonna choose 90 degrees. We're gonna transform the objects and also gonna transform the patterns and we're gonna copy. Takes us back to some We did earlier. Almost, isn't it? Okay, let's do the same thing again, right? So let's look at that. Without the griddle, you could see we got something of it psychedelic going on that you can see that unlike this one, it doesn't really line up as we might want. So if you want to change it and make it look a bit more like this one, what you do is this you select one of these patterns are time gonna zoom in, make it easy to see, and you simply hit the return key, which is one that you possibly haven't using illustrated before. Unless you've been typing. Return key is a short cut for move Now, do we want to move something 50 minus 50? No, we don't want to move it. No horizontally, a tool. So let's just leave that on. Now we can say we don't want to transform the object, but we now we do want to transform the patterns. So this is where it gets interesting. I put my cursor in the vertical area like that. And then when I do my up arrow. Notice how you're nudging the pattern so you can nudge that any way you like, notes it is going one millimeter at a time. So if you want to be super precise and you wanted that to go a little bit less than you're gonna have to just typing five point whatever. But I'm gonna leave it like that at six. Hit return, and then with my selection tool, I'll do the same here. Not sure. Quite like that one, huh? I was all right. So click on this one again. Hit return. So it should remember where before it's not gonna transform the object. It's gonna transform the patterns this time that I'm interested in the horizontal adjustment. Or am I may be vertical first with that done not liking it something like that. Clearly, if I had lots of time, I could play around with all these settings, and it might be that have been created It I'm I want to go back on, recreate the original pattern, but I think you get the idea that I'm using the transformation options. But off each individual, Patton so end up with possibly not exactly the same as I was copying. Yeah, you could say it looks a little bit different, but that guy kind of like that. So you can probably imagine that what I want to do now to take it further is to select these Chuck, please into the swatches panel. Now, we could try that, but I'm afraid it wouldn't work because what we've got here of four separate patterns that we're trying to turn into one pattern and what you can't have an illustrator is a pattern inside another pattern. So the way around it is, Well, let me show you. So throwing in there won't work in a similar way to when we did object path outline stroke . You can do something called expand. And that kind of takes what we got but makes it out of real objects rather than a pattern. So let's do that object expand expands thes objects into Phil's. Now it's all grouped, and I can see it's groups could system up there. So rather than getting into a big discussion of groups, I'll just show you the problem with this. If I select the whole thing, track them in hand, it's sort of work because it's no longer a pattern. Sorry, it wasn't made of patterns, so if I put that in, you could get some interesting. But you will notice is a whole lot of space around it that that might seem a bit strange. But let's look more closely what's going on over here that's going to outline mode. You'll notice that actually, there's a lot more going on. Then we might have been aware. So we expanded the pattern. It's had to recreate it out out of all these separate objects. And it's all of these things that get included. That's where you got all that space around the edge in that we can't see these. They're still part of it. So basically, we need to get rid of all this. So we got bit work today. So firstly, I'm gonna go back out of preview mode so out of outline into pretty mode. So that's come out of control, wife just to make it easier on the movil, these out the way and I'm bucking again. So essentially we need to get rid of these. So the way they were gonna do you This is one at a time. Move these over here as we done before. We need to expand them now. When I expand, it doesn't look any different. But if I look in outline mode, you can see. Actually, it is quite different. What you've got here is something called a clipping mask. This square here masks awful this stuff around the edges. You can only see what's in the middle, and it's because of that extra stuff around the edge that the pattern didn't work. So we need to do is get rid of all this stuff around the edge. Now the way to do that is to change from the main selection to not of the direct selection tool, but one underneath of the group selection to the can object clipping, mask, edit contents and then I need to do carefully is hold down the shift key and click on that square as well. So that's the easiest way I know to select all those bits. That's the tricky bit. And then all I need to do is go to the window menu and choose Pathfinder. But then, if you've seen the Pathfinder panel before, but it's a way of combining things the one I want. Is this one here? Divide. When I go back to preview, you'll see that stunt. Here we go. So that's the 1st 1 It's a way for second. I'm gonna repeat that with all the other ones. So I moved that out of the way for the time being. Leave this one in. So again, objects clipping mask. Sorry. Objects expand. Object clipping, mask headed contents going to outline mode. She's the group selection toe carefully shift click that wasn't careful enough, so I'm gonna need to do that again. Object clipping mask. Edit contents. Try again. Carefully shift click every guy and then I can do divide. That's too the reason, by the way, that I'm having to do that in outline My. That is an outline that you can click on the edge of something even when it's overlapped by something else. So it's much, much easier. So twice more object. Expand objects, keeping mosque at its contents. Go to outline mode. Using this tool carefully Shift click didn't quite get it. So that again, Erica Okay, so three out of four as to the last one here. Object expand object clipping mask. Had it contents group selected action to carefully shift click. We'll find her. Okay, so thank you for hanging in there. Carefully picked up by that corner during the up lap. If you picked up by that corner, notice how the cursor get little White Square next week to tell you about to pick up something. Notice how? Get a white Kirsten When you I would lined it so well. Truth, let's do preview. Okay, Looks good. So the difference between what had before is now this is not made out of a pattern, so we can quite happily select all of that. Throw it in here and then apply the Patton and look at that. Wonderful. So goodness is not the easiest thing to look at it. And also, it's not the easiest thing to create, but, as you can see, just using black and white lines, just using a few little tricks you can crazy, really incredible geometric patterns using illustrator 15. Final project & request for feedback: so I really hope you've enjoyed discourse on. I really hope you enjoyed creating geometric patterns with illustrated just using lines. Said a couple of things before we finished. Firstly, for your final project would like to just try any combination of things that you really enjoyed already on. See if you can take it further, play with some ideas, seal work, see what doesn't maybe start to find your own techniques and your own approaches and be really interested to see what you come up with. So please do share anything that you do create with the Project gallery that is associated with this cause on and finally, um, I've been thinking about other courses that I might do. This is a bit of a new area for me, so I would really appreciate your feedback. So I'm thinking of whether I might do similar things with with other shapes. Eso Some of you might have seen my creating logos with different shapes, courses, something taken this further. Appreciate your feedback on something like this. So this is my first look at creating I, um, geometric trip. This is just using circles, so this is a bit more similar to my logos courses, But let me know if that's the kind of thing you like. And if I get some positive for feedback on that, then I'll be creating that fairly seen, so really look forward to hearing from me all the best.