Geometric Patterns: Simple to Sophisticated Repeats in Adobe Illustrator

1. Class Introduction: In this class, we're going to dive into creating geometric patterns. I'll let you in on the secret. When I first started out as a pattern designer, I was hooked on creating intricate, floral, puro patterns with lots of detail. And I still love a good floral, but I also love a bold geometric print. As you build a portfolio, there's always a place for a good geometric print. They're great as coordinate and blender patterns, but I think a strong geometric print can also steal the show and be the hero of any collection if we haven't met yet. I'm Amy Service, pattern designer and illustrator. And of course, skillshare teacher. If you know me from one of my previous skillshare classes, welcome back. Up to now, I've taught classes on the ipad, but this class is all about Adobe Illustrator on the desktop. We'll be using the shape tools and Illustrator to create our patterns today, so there's no drawing skills needed for this class. We're going to take those basic shapes and turn them into lovely geometric prints with lots of detail and complexity. This class is great for beginners who are starting out on their surface pattern design journey. But even if you have some experience in surface pattern design, this class is a great way to learn new tricks and explore your creativity. I'll start with the basics and we'll work our way up to more complex patterns. We'll talk about how to build a pattern and illustrator the different repeat layouts, and how to manipulate basic shapes to create new and interesting forms. We will explore how to add details to basic scallop and OG patterns. And we'll end with a fun bow house inspired color block pattern. If this class sounds fun and you want to stay up to date on any discussions that post about new classes, be sure to follow me on Skillshare. You can also find me on Instagram or Pinterest at my EV Designs. I'm ready to jump right in if you are to join me in the next lesson. So we can get started. 2. Class Project: For the class project, you'll be creating geometric patterns in Adobe Illustrator. We'll start with some pattern basics, like how to build a basic repeat, the different repeat layouts, and changing the spacing of elements. We'll move into techniques for manipulating basic shapes in Adobe Illustrator using the direct Selection tool, the Shape Builder tool, and effects to create more organic shapes. We'll take what we've learned and add details and complexity to basic scallop and OG patterns. We'll finish with a Bauhaus inspired color block pattern and review the recolor artwork tool. At the end of the class, you'll have several geometric patterns ready to be exported. We will start with several basic repeats and end with a few more complex designs. I encourage you to try all the patterns in this class, but you can pick your favorites to share as your final class project. In the Project and Resources tab, I have included the color palettes I use in this class, along with a list of the keyboard shortcuts I use and common pattern layouts for reference, you can download these files from your browser and save them on your desktop. I'd love to see what you create. Please upload your project at the class gallery page. You can share any part of your process and you can always go back and update your project at any time. To upload a project, just go to the Project and resources section of the class page and tap Submit Project. When the page opens, you can upload a cover image and add a title and description. The cover image will automatically be cropped so you can also share additional full size images and then click Publish. In the next lesson, we're going to start with some pattern basics. 3. Pattern Basics: Dots: Let's start by creating a new file. I'm going to create mine using pixels as my unit of measurement. But you do have the option to change this using the drop down menu. I would suggest using pixels to follow along with me in this class, I'm going to set a 200 pixel width and height. And I'll start with one Artboard. I'll leave the color mode as Y, K. But if I was going to be creating work four screens, then I would want to change this to RGB. I'm going to leave the rest of these default settings the same, and I'll press Create. To get started, I want to make sure that we're working from the same workspace layout. I'll go up to the window, then workspace, and you'll see that I have Essentials Classic selected. If you have a different workspace option checked, then the layout of your tools and windows will be different from mine. It may be easier to follow along in the class if you're using the same workspace layout. I recommend using the Essentials classic option. I also like to remove these standard default color swatches, because I like to add my own color palettes. I'm going to click this folder, and then I'll press Shift on my keyboard and click the red swatch. And tap the trash can icon, and it'll delete all those swatches. Later on, I'll be adding some color palettes I've already created. And I'll show you how to do that too. For now, I'm just going to work with these black and white swatches. Next, I want to make sure that I save my file. I can either go up to file and click Save. Or I can use keyboard shortcut command S to save my file. And I had the option to save it on my computer or to save it to the Creative Cloud. The benefit to saving it to the Creative Cloud is that it's available across all of my devices that are signed into my Creative Cloud account. If I wanted to switch to my ipad and start using Illustrator on the ipad, this file will be available without having to export it. I'll select Save to Creative Cloud. I'm going to give it a name. I'll name it Geometric Patterns, and then I'll hit Save. You'll notice up here the file extension is AIC, and the designates that it's a Creative Cloud file. If I had saved it to my computer, it would just be a file extension. Now the first thing I'm going to do is create a basic shape. So I can either go over to my toolbar and you'll see this Shapes menu. If I click and hold, I have several options for shapes. I can either select one of these or use a keyboard shortcut. The keyboard shortcut for the rectangle tool is M and L for the ellipse tool. So I'm going to be using these keyboard shortcuts a lot in this class. For now, I'm just going to select my ellipse tool. I'll go to my Artboard, and I'll click and drag to create an ellipse. Now if I hold shift, it will constrain the proportions to a perfect circle. This is one way to create a shape. I'm going to press command Z to undo that action. And this time I just want to click and it'll pull up this ellipse menu box. I can actually select the exact width and height that I want. In this case, I want to create a 100 pixel circle. I'll tap okay to create my circle. And you'll notice up here under the Shapes menu that you can see the width and height of my circle. And I can actually constrain the proportions of my shape by turning this lock on and off with it locked. If I change my width to 150 pixels, it will automatically change my height to stay in proportion to my width. If I were to unlock the constraint and I changed the height, it would only change the height and not the width. Then I'd have this oval shape. I'm going to press command Z to undo that so I can go back to my 100 pixel circle. The next thing I want to do is change the fill and stroke of my circle. I currently have a white fill and a black stroke, and I want to remove the stroke and actually want to switch to the black circle. So the first thing I'm going to do is use this swap button, and it'll swap my fill and stroke colors. Then I'll click my stroke and I'll select none. And then I'm just going to go back and select the fill again. And now I have a black filled circle without any stroke. I'm also going to use the Align tools to align this to the center of my artboard, both vertically and horizontally. Now it's centered with this Drop Do menu. You'll see that I have Align to Artboard Selected. If I had multiple objects that I wanted to align, I could use the Align to selection to align them to one another. I'll press M on my keyboard to select the rectangle tool and I'm going to click once, and this time I'm going to create a 200 pixel square to match the size of my artboard. It automatically defaults to the black fill that I had previously selected. I'm going to go over to my toolbar and I'll give it no fill. And of course, it has no stroke already. This is going to be the boundary box for my pattern tile. I'm also going to center it vertically and horizontally on the artboard. And if I open up the layers panel, you'll see that I have the new rectangle sitting in front of my circle. You can see it's at the top. So I'm going to arrange this rectangle to be behind the circle. And I can either click and drag it down in my layers panel. Or I can use command shift left or right bracket to send it to the back or to the front. I'll press V on my keyboard so that I can drag and select both my ellipse and my background rectangle. I'll drag that across to my swatches panel and it will create a new pattern swatch. I'll press Z on my keyboard so that I can zoom out. And then I'm going to press the Spacebar to open up the hand tool, and I'll just drag this over to the side. I'll press M on my keyboard and I'll click and drag to create a square. And fill it with my pattern. Make sure that the fill is on the top so that the fill contains your pattern swatch and not your stroke. And you'll see that I have this basic repeating pattern. Now I want to scale my pattern and I'm going to right click and select transform. And then scale first, I want to turn off transform objects. Because I don't want to scale my square, I just want to scale the pattern within it. I'll double click the scale, and then I can reduce this by pressing the down arrow. I can also type in an amount and hit Tab, and this will scale it to 50% If I hold shift and tap the arrow down, it will scale it in 10% increments. You'll see now that I have a much smaller scaled polka dot repeat. And then I'll just tap, Okay. Another option to scale your shape is to press on your keyboard. And then just click from just outside the bottom corner of the shape and drag diagonally upwards. If I drag my mouth sideways or up and down, it's going to skew the proportions. If I hold my shift as I drag, it will constrain the proportions. Then if I hold shift and press the tilda key, I can resize the pattern within the shape. That's to scale and then hold shift and hold tilda to scale your pattern only. I'll let go of those and I'll press V on my keyboard. If I drag my square around, you'll see that this particular pattern has no background fill, It just has a transparent background. Right. Now, to create a basic pattern swatch, you don't actually need a background fill color. All you need is your no fill, no stroke boundary square, which tells illustrator where the boundaries of your pattern tile are. If you want your pattern to have a background color, you simply have to add a filled square in the background. I'm going to press M on my keyboard and I'll click to create a 200 pixel square. It automatically fills with my pattern, but I'm just going to come up here and change this to a white fill. I'll align it to the center of my artboard. And then I'm going to hit command left bracket once and then a second time and this will move it behind my black circle. Now my new field square is sitting right behind my circle but above my boundary box. My background shape is the no fill, no stroke bounding box. And then I have my white field square and then my black circle. I'll press V on my keyboard and I'll click and drag to select all of these shapes together. And then I'm just going to drag all of these over to my Swatches panel to create a new swatch. And you'll notice that the Swatch doesn't look very different. But now if I select my shape and I fill it with this new pattern, you see it has a white background. Most people are going to want to have some filled color in the background of their patterns, but you don't have to have it. Now, when adding a background color, you do need to make sure that the filled square is at least the same size as your boundary square. My white filled background square is 200 pixels, so is my no fill, no stroke boundary box. If I were to go up to the shape menu and I reduce the filled white square by even 123 pixels. And then I select all my shapes and I drag to create a new pattern swatch. You'll notice that I have these lines in my pattern delineating the grid of my pattern. If I zoom in, you'll see that it's just creating a little gap where those pixels have no color and the transparency is showing through my pattern. That's because my background square doesn't line up perfectly with my bounding box. I want to make sure that my background square is at least 200 pixels. But I can also go beyond that and make it slightly larger by adding an extra pixel or two to the size. Now if I create a new pattern swatch and fill my shape again with the new pattern, the gap is no longer there. Sometimes just having an extra pixel or two around the background filled shape can help remove that little phantom white line that you sometimes see when you test your pattern. It's the no stroke bounding box that is creating the tile of your pattern. And your filled background square can either be the same size or larger. It just can't be smaller. Here we have a basic polka dot pattern and a grid layout. In the next lesson, we're going to talk about the different layouts for patterns, and I'll show you how to create half drops and brick repeats. 4. Pattern Basics: Layouts: In the first lesson, we created a basic polka dot pattern in a grid repeat layout. In this lesson, we're going to talk about other layouts for patterns which are the brick, half drop and diamond layouts. The first thing that I'm going to do is select my circle. And I'll go to the shaped menu and change the size to 50 pixels. Then I'll drag this up to the top left corner so that the center of the circle aligns to the center of the board. Remember the background boundary box is 200 pixels, so I'm going to move the circle 100 pixels by pressing shift command, which opens up the move menu. I want to start by moving it 100 pixels to the right and zero pixels down. I'm just shifting it over half the distance of my bounding box. And I want to press copy so that I make a copy of that circle and retain the original. If I press command D, it will duplicate that last action. Now the second circle is moved another hundred pixels to the right, or 200 pixels across from my original circle. This way it falls across the right side of my pattern tile at the same point as my original circle to the left. I'll move this square over just a little. And then I'm going to drag and select all of these together. Again, I'm going to press Command shift M to open the move tool. This time I don't want to move it horizontally at all, but I want to move it 200 pixels down. This will shift everything down to the bottom of my artboard. If I press copy, it'll make a copy of these dots. And they will fall along the bottom edge in exactly the same spot as they fall along the top edge. This precision will make sure I don't have anything cut off in my repeat. Now, if I were to create a pattern swatch at this point, it would just be creating a new grid repeat. To create a brick repeat, I need to take these two elements and move them halfway down to create a new row. I'll select these dots Shift command to open the move menu. And this time I only want to move them 50 pixels horizontally. Instead of moving them all the way to the bottom, I want to create a new row and move them 100 pixels vertically down. If I press copy, I now have created a new row that is offset horizontally, half the distance, creating a brick layout. I'll drag all of these over to create a new pattern swatch. Then I just select my square and fill it with this new pattern. And you'll see how this pattern layout shifts. I want to scale this pattern, so you can see it just a little bit better. I right click Transform Scale, and I don't want to transform objects. Hit, okay. This brick repeat is just offset every other row. The half drop repeat is the exact opposite. I'm going to erase all of these extra dots and I'll come back to where I started with my original dot. This time I'm going to select it and shift command M. And I want to move it zero pixels horizontally, and I want to move it 100 pixels vertically. To start, I need to make sure I have transform objects checked. I'm going to press copy. Now I've moved it down 100 pixels. If I press command D, it'll duplicate that action. Now I've moved this new circle, 100 pixels, and it's 200 pixels down from my original circles, which is the height of my bounding box. I'll select all of my dots along the left and press shift command M and move them 200 pixels to the right. I don't want to move them down at all. And again, I'll press copy. Now this set of dots is aligned perfectly along the right edge to line up the repeat. To create the half drop layout, I want to select these two circles. Press shift command M, and this time I want to move them halfway across my artboard to create a new column. And I want to shift them 50 pixels down. When I press copy, you'll see that it looks similar to the brick repeat, but this time every other column is shifted halfway down, creating the half drop repeat. I'll select all of these elements and drag them over to make a new pattern swatch. When I fill my square with a new pattern, you'll see the subtle difference in the change with the polka dot. It's subtle, but the distance between rows and columns shift slightly. This is the brick repeat, this is the half drop. And then this is my original grid layout. Now you may see diamond patterns listed as another type of repeat layout. But a diamond layout is really just a combination of the half drop and the brick. If I remove this dot and this dot and then these two. Now I'll come back to what is essentially a basic grid. This time I'm going to move this top dot 100 pixels horizontally and 100 pixels vertically, So the same distance vertically and horizontally. And if I press copy, I now have a diamond layout. So every column and row are offset the same distance, rather than being half the distance of one or the other. So I'm going to create a new pattern Swatch and notice how my diamond pattern has this symmetrical diamond shape. The difference between these layouts is essentially the distance between columns and rows, but the diamond half, drop and brick are all offset rows and columns. Now that you know the different pattern layout types, in the next lesson we're going to discuss how to change the spacing between elements to enhance the complexity of your patterns. 5. Pattern Basics: Spacing: In the last two lessons, we've worked through various repeat layouts with our polka dot pattern. So far we've been working with an element that has plenty of negative space surrounding it, which creates an all over spot pattern. We can also work with elements that are spaced tightly together, creating new shapes in the negative spaces. In this lesson, we're going to talk about patterns with interlocking and overlapping shapes. So the first thing I'm going to do is erase all of my black dots and I'm also going to erase this white background square. But I'll leave the 200 pixel bounding box with no fill and no stroke. I'll press M on my keyboard and I'll bring up the rectangle tool. And I'll click once to open the menu. And I want to create a 100 pixel rectangle and I'm going to fill it with a black fill. I'll press V on my keyboard and I want to use the alignment tools to align this to the top left corner of my artboard. My black square is half the width and half the height of my bounding box. I'll press shift command M, and I'm going to move this 100 pixels to the right and 100 pixels down. I'll press Copy. And now I've created a basic checkerboard pattern. I'm going to select the background square that has no fill and no stroke. And I'll press command C to copy it. And command to place the copy directly in front of the original. And I'll give it a white fill color. Now that's a little hard to see what I just did. I'll open the layers panel and you'll see that I have no fill, no stroke bounding box in the back and I have this new white square directly above it. And then I have my two black squares. I'm going to select all of these shapes and I'll drag them across to create a pattern swatch. I'll select my square and fill it with my new pattern. And you'll see that this is the single pattern grid where my black squares line up with one another. It creates the interlocking white squares in the negative space. This is a basic interlocking check pattern. We can add some dimension to the simple check by changing up the colors. I'll select this top black square, Press shift command to move it. I don't want to move it horizontally, but I do want to move it down 100 pixels. I'll press Copy. This time I want to change these two squares to a new color. I'll double tap on my fill color. And I'm just going to select a medium shade of gray. I'll hit, okay, I select all of my shapes again and create a new pattern swatch. I now have a gingham check. There's this illusion of transparency because I have white stripes and then I have gray stripes and where they overlap I have black squares, it looks as gray are blending to make the black sections. Now so far I've been working in black and white, but I can also add a bit of color to my gingham check. Now, I could create my colors manually as I did with the gray color, but I can also use the blend tool to create a gradient color. I'll press M on my keyboard and I'll draw square. And I'm going to fill it with a light color, maybe something round here. Tap K, and I'll press V on my keyboard, and I'll drag a copy to the right by pressing Option and shift and dragging it across. I'll go back to my fill, and I want to change this new square to a slightly darker shade of the same color. And press. Okay, now I want to find the color that is a perfect blend of these two shades. I'm going to select both of my shapes. I'm going up to the object menu. I'll select Blend. The first thing I want to do is update the blend options. The default is to create smooth color transitions, but I want to use the drop down menu to select specified steps. Because all I want is one new color that blends the two original colors together. If I needed multiple shades, I could specify a larger amount of colors that I need. But I'm going to choose one and press. Okay. Now that I've set my options, I need to blend my colors. So I can either go up to Object, blend, and Make. Or I can press option command B on my keyboard, Option command B, and it will create one new color. I've got my light shade, my dark shade, and then this shade is a perfect blend of those two. The next thing I need to do is go up to my Object menu, and I need to expand the effect. I'll press okay. Now I have these three colors. I'll tap the new color group. And I'm just going to leave these settings and I'll press okay. Now I have these three new swatches in my swatches panel. I'll delete these squares. And I want to select my dark black square. I'm going to change it for my darkest color. I'll select my two medium gray squares. And this time I'm going to select the midtone color. Now I'll select my background color, and I'm going to change it to my lightest color. If I select all of these and create a new pattern swatch, it will create a colorful gingham. Check the blended colors help create that illusion of overlapping stripes. I can change up the spacing of my pattern by alternating the size of my squares with the bottom square selected. I'll go to the Shapes menu and I want to make sure my proportions are locked. I'm going to change this to 50 pixels square and I'm going to align it to the bottom left corner. Now to match up my shapes, I need to change this top square. And I'll first unlock the proportions. And I only need the width to be 50 pixels. And I need to extend the height to cover the 50 pixels that I lost when I reduced the first square. I need my width to be 50 pixels and I need to add 50 to my height and make it 150 pixels tall. If I align my shape to the top left corner, it will line up the top and bottom shapes perfectly. I need to do the same thing to this bottom square, except I need to make sure that it's 150 pixels wide and 50 pixels tall. And then I'll align it to the bottom right corner. This will create slightly different proportions to my pattern. I'll select these and drag them over and I'll create a new version of my gingham check pattern. You can have some fun playing with the size and spacing of your pattern elements. I'm going to delete these squares because I want to talk about patterns with overlapping shapes. And we're going to create a basic scallop pattern. I'll press L on my keyboard, and I'll click once, and I'm going to create a 100 pixel ellipse. I'll press okay and then press V on my keyboard. To bring up the selection tool, I want to align the center of my circle to the top left corner of my artboard. I'll press shift command M and move it 100 pixels to the left and zero pixels vertically that is aligned right next to the original circle with no space in between. I'll press command D to duplicate that last action. Now I have a circle on the right side of my artboard that is 200 pixels directly across from the original. I'll select these top two, and I'll press shift command M. And this time I want to move them down in a brick repeat layout. I'm going to move them 50 pixels horizontally and then 50 pixels vertically, so that they'll overlap. I'll press Copy, and I'm going to give the new row a different color. I also need to make sure that this circle sits in front of the circle in the back. I'll press Command shift right bracket to bring both of these items to the front. Now I can press Shift and drag to select the top three circles in the back so that all five of my circles are selected. Command shift M, and I want to move these rows directly down. So I'll make the horizontal position zero. And I'll change the vertical to 100 pixels because I have two rows selected that need to move 50 pixels each. And I need to double what I did the first time. I'll press copy now. Each row is staggered 50 pixels down and shifted 50 pixels to the side. Lastly, I need to create a bottom row. So I'll press command D to duplicate that last action. Because I'm working in nice run numbers, I know that this row is 100 pixels down, and then this next row is 200 pixels down, which is the full size of my artboard. The other thing I want to do is make sure that I have my rows arranged in the correct order to create the overlapping rows. Now because I have no space between any of my shapes, I don't actually need my filled background square so I can delete that. Do of course need my no fill, no stroke bounding box that will designate the boundaries of my pattern tile? I'll select all my circles and my background bounding box, and I'll drag this over to create a new pattern swatch. And now I have a basic scallop pattern. I'll drag this over just a little bit. One way you can change the scallop is to add an outline. I'll select all these circles and I'll press Shift to deselect my bounding box because I don't want to change it. And I'll make the circles all the same color. Now to delineate between the shades, I'm going to add a stroke. I'll add a dark stroke. And I'll increase the size a little bit, and you'll see that now my scallop shape appears to be spaced out. I'll select everything and I'll drag them across and create a new pattern. I need to make sure that my fill color is selected and not my stroke. I can fill my square with this new pattern. It creates a scallop pattern that appears to have spacing between the elements. The dark shade looks like a background fill color, and the scallop shapes are spread out. And I can increase the spacing even more by increasing the size of my outline. I'll shift to do select my bounding box and I will increase the size of my outline so that the spacing is even more pronounced. I'll select everything, drag it to the swatches panel, create a new pattern, and then I'll test the pattern once more. You can play around with varying the weight of your outline and the spacing of your scallops. Now that we've reviewed some basic interlocking and overlapping patterns, in the next lesson we're going to talk about continual repeats, such as stripes and trellis patterns. 6. Pattern Basics: Stripes: In the last lesson, we talked about spacing between elements with interlocking and overlapping patterns. In this lesson, we're going to talk about continual patterns. In a continual repeat, the beginning and the end of the repeating elements are obscured. We're going to be creating vertical, horizontal, and diagonal strike patterns, including symmetrical and asymmetrical trellis patterns. I'm going to start by going over to my layers panel and deleting out all of these circles. I'll leave the no fill, no stroke bounding box which is still 200 pixels square. I'll press M on my keyboard and I'll click once to create a rectangle that is 100 pixels wide and 200 pixels high. I'll press okay and I'll give it a fill color. Let's go ahead and use one of our new color swatches. I'll align it to the left and to the top of my artboard. And I'll press V on my keyboard and select my background square. And press command C to create a copy. And command to paste in front. I'll give it a fill color for my background. I'll select all of my shapes and create a new pattern swatch. And let's test the pattern. This is a basic symmetrical stripe where the stripes are equidistant. I can change the spacing of my stripes by going to my square and changing the width to ten pixels. I'll align it to the left side. Press command shift M and move it 50 pixels to the right and zero pixels vertically. And press copy. I'll press command D to duplicate that move several times. And I'll select everything and drag it to my swatches panel. Now I have a thinner stripe pattern. You can play around with the spacing of your own stripe patterns and even vary the spacing between each stripe. If I want a horizontal stripe, I can rotate these by pressing R on my keyboard. And I'll rotate them and then press V on my keyboard to drag them to the center until they snap to the sides. I'll create a new pattern swatch. Now I have a horizontal stripe. The basic stripes are easy to create, but what if I want to create a diagonal stripe? I'm going to select all of these and erase them. And I'll press M on my keyboard and click once. This time I'm going to create a rectangle that is five pixels wide. And I want the height to be larger than my artboard, so I'll make it 400 pixels tall. I'll press, okay, I'll rotate this stripe and I'll press shift as I do to constrain the angle. Because I want it to be at a 45 degree angle. I'll let go, and now I have a perfect 45 degree angle stripe. I'll press V on my keyboard, and I'm just going to drag this to the bottom left of my artboard. I'll press shift command M. And I want to start by creating a copy on the opposite side of my artboard. So I'll move it 200 pixels to the right and zero pixels vertically. And I'll press copy. Now my diagonal stripe is crossing the left border at exactly the same angle as the right border. And it's crossing the bottom border at the same angle as the top border. Let's select everything and create a pattern swatch to test out. Now I have a perfectly repeating diagonal stripe. Now let's add more stripes to this pattern. I'll select the original and press shift command M. And I'm going to move this 25 pixels to tighten up the spacing. I'll press Copy, and if I press command D several times, I can duplicate this stripe at the same distance to fill in the space. Now I need to select just these middle stripes because I've already copied these outer two. And I'll press shift command M to move these 200 pixels to the opposite side of my artboard, just as I did with the first stripe. I'll press copy and you'll notice that I do have one stripe that is crossing right along the top left corner. And it needs to cross along the bottom left corner at the exact same spot. So I'll select this one and press shift command M. And this time I want to move it, pick 200 pixels down and press copy. I'm going to select all of these and drag them to my swatches panel, and I have my updated stripe pattern. Let's scale this so you can just see it a little better. I'll scale it at 200% only transform the pattern and hit, okay next. Let's create a diamond trellis pattern by mirroring these diagonal stripes. I'm going to lock this test square so that I don't select it. Then I'll drag to select all of my diagonal stripes. I'll press command G to group them. Command C to copy and command to paste in front I'll press on my keyboard to bring up the reflect tool. Now I'll click and drag while I'm holding the shift key so that I lock the angle and it'll mirror my stripes precisely to the opposite side. I'll press V on my keyboard and shift command to ungroup this set. Now I need to delete some of these extra stripes that don't cross my artboard. Next I need to fill in the missing stripes up at the top left corner. I'll select these three and press shift command M. I need to move these to the left, which means I need to make this negative 200 and I don't want to move it vertically at all. Up to this point, we've been moving shapes to the right or down, and that requires positive numbers. To move an object to the left, you have to make the horizontal position negative. If you want to move it up, you have to make your vertical position negative. Just keep that in mind as you're moving objects. With the move tool, I'll press copy now. I have all my stripes repeating across each border. I'll select all of these and let's test this pattern and make sure I didn't miss one. I'll press the Spacebar to slide this over, and I'll unlock my square so I can fill it with a new pattern. Again, I'm going to scale this transform scale. And only transform the pattern. And hit, Okay. As you can see, I now have a symmetrical diamond trellis pattern. I'll press the space bar and I'll slide this back over to my arm board. So far we've created diagonal stripes at 45 degree angles and a symmetrical trellis pattern. But let's say that we want to make this trellis asymmetrical. Figuring out the ratio of the angle of your stripe to the size of your boundary box can be quite difficult. If you want to create an asymmetrical pattern, the easiest thing to do is select all of the elements of your pattern. And right click transform scale. We want to transform the objects only. And we want to use the non uniform section. Let's say that we want to keep it at 100% horizontally, but we want to scale it 150% vertically. You can see we have this stretched out diamond shape. I'll press, okay, I'm just going to drag this down a little bit. Now this only works if you select the background bounding box, the background fill shape, and all of the stripes. So that everything in your pattern is scaled at the same proportions. I'll create a new Swatch, and I'll slide this to the side. Let's test the pattern. Now I have a perfectly repeating asymmetrical diamond trellis. If I delete this original group of stripes, I actually have a diagonal stripe that isn't at a 45 degree angle. I'll create a new pattern Swatch, and now I have a diagonal stripe that's at a different angle. That's the basics of working with vertical, horizontal, and diagonal stripe patterns. Now that we've reviewed how to create basic geometric patterns, in the next few lessons, we're going to learn how to turn basic shapes into complex shapes. And we're going to start by using the direct selection tool in the next lesson. 7. Editing Shapes: Anchor Points: In the last few lessons, we created several basic geometric patterns. Over the next few lessons, we're going to take basic shapes and turn them into complex shapes using the tools and illustrator. In this lesson, we'll start by adjusting anchor points and corners and using the rotate and reflect tools to create new shapes. The first thing I'm going to do is delete out all of these objects because I don't need them anymore. I'll press Option command to fit my board to screen as we've seen before. If I press M on my keyboard, I can click and drag out a square. If I hold shift, it'll constrain the proportions to a perfect square, and I'm just going to fill this with a new color. I can also click and drag out a rectangle. If I press L on my keyboard, I can click and drag a circle. And if I hold shift, it'll make that a perfect circle. If I click and drag without holding Shift, I can create an oval shape for additional shapes. I can click and hold the Shape tool to open the fly out menu and see the different options. Let's select our polygon tool the same as before. I can click and drag a polygon shape. If I hold shift, it will lock the angle so that it's nice and straight. If I press the down arrow key, I can reduce the number of sides and create a triangle. I can press the up arrow to increase the number of sides. I can also click once to open the polygon menu, where I can change the radius to any number I want. The larger the radius, the larger the size of my polygon. I can also change the number of sides and hit Okay. If I click again, I can actually increase this to 25 pixels. And I'll press okay. And you can see that my polygon is much larger. I'm going to press V to select these and move them down. Next up I'm going to press and hold the Shape Menu. And select the Star. Once again, I can click and drag to Create a Star. If I hold Shift, it will keep it nice and straight. If I use the down arrow, it will create a triangle. If I press the up arrow, it will increase the number of points as much as I want. If I click once, I'll open the star options and I can set radius 1.2 and the number of points of my star. First I'll decrease the number of points to six. Next, I'll change the two radii. The larger these numbers are, the larger my star will be, the greater the difference between the two, the steeper the points of my star will be. Let's start by making the star 15 pixels and then 20 pixels and six sides. Press okay. And you can see I have this nice shallow pointed star. I'll click again, and this time I'll increase the difference. Let's change this to 10.25 and keep the same number of points. If I click okay, you can see that I now have these really steep points on my star. I'll press A to open the direct selection tool. If I click my square, you can see all of my anchor points of my shape. If I click and drag this little corner tool, I can round the corners and it rounds everything evenly. I can slide them back out to create my corners. Again, if I only want to change one corner, I can click one anchor point and you'll notice that this anchor point is blue and the rest of these are white. And you only see this one little corner tool, If I click and drag, I can take this all the way up to touch the other anchor points or back down if I want to round multiple corners, I can hold shift and select a second anchor point. You'll see that these two are now blue. And again, I can round these corners. If I double click on one of these corners, I can change it from a rounded corner to an inverted corner, or a hamper. Let's select the inverted round. And now I want to specify an exact radius. So let's say I want to do 25 pixels. And I'll hit okay. And now I have this inverted rounded corner. I can select any shape and I can click an anchor point and simply move it around. I can press the down arrow key to move it one pixel at a time. And if I hold shift, as I press the down arrow, it'll move it ten pixels at a time. I can open up the Properties menu, and I have the option to convert my anchor points. I can change this to a corner point, or I can change it back to a smooth rounded point. Let's keep the corner point. Next, I can select this rounded anchor point. And I can select one of the handles and move it around to adjust the angle. If I hold shift, it will lock the movement to 45 degree angles. And I'll press the Space bar just to move this down. So you can see if I press Option Command and then click my handle. It'll break the handle so I can move it independent of the first one. Once I settle on a position, I'll let go. And now I have this S shaped curve. If I click a handle and I want to keep it aligned instead of wobbling around, I can hold shift so that as I drag it will keep it nice and straight in line with the first one. Keep the symmetrical. I'll do the same thing on the other side. I'll click and hold shift as I drag it up to keep it aligned. At this point I would just encourage you to play around with these shapes, manipulate the anchor points and the corners, and test out your own variations to these shapes. I'll press V on my keyboard and I'm going to delete these extra shapes. Let's talk about how to use the rotate and reflect tools. I'll select my shape and I'll move it around my artboard. And if I hold option as I move it will create a copy. You'll notice that there's those little black and white arrows and that tells me I'm making a copy right now. I'm holding option and I can drag it around. But if I also hold shift as I hold down option, I can move it at 45 degree angles up and down, side to side, and the movement is constrained to keep it in aligned with the original. With shift option still pressed, I'm going to let go of my mouse and now I have a copy of my shape. I'll press R on my keyboard to open up the rotate tool. I can hold shift to rotate it at 45 degree angles. I can change the point of rotation. So I'll drag this down to rotate it from the bottom anchor point. Now I can simply click and drag and rotate it around this point. If I hold shift, I can rotate it at 45 degree angles. And if I hover over the rotation point and press option, you can see these little dots that appear. I'll click and open the Rotate menu so that I can specify the angle of the rotation. Let's say that I want to create petals of the flower, and I know that I want five petals evenly spaced around a circle. If I'm not sure what angle to enter, I can type 360 degrees for my full circle and then divide by five. And if I click Tab, you'll see that the angle needs to be 72 degrees. I can press okay to rotate it, or I can create a copy. And then I can press command D to duplicate that action until I come full circle. I'm going to press V on my keyboard and select all of these. And slide them over here. And I'm just going to shrink this down to 50 pixels so that it's out of the way. I'll press option on my keyboard and I'm going to drag this down here. And let's open up the reflect tool. By pressing it looks similar with that same reflection point in the center I can drag to reflect the shape around that point. Holding shift will reflect it at 45 degree angles. I can also move the reflection point to the tip as I did before. Or I can move it off to the side of my shape so that I can reflect it to the side. I can click and hold shift and it will reflect it to the side directly opposite If I hold down option before letting go, it will reflect a copy. I'll let go and I have a copy reflected to the other side. Once again, if I hold option with this reflection point, I can click and open up the reflect tool options. I can reflect it horizontally, vertically, and I can change the angle. Let's say I want to reflect it horizontally. And I want to change the angle to something like 333 degrees. If I press copy, it'll make a copy. If I press okay, it'll simply just rotate that shape. The last thing I want to show you in this lesson is how to divide circles into wedges. I'm going to press L on my keyboard, and I'll click and create a 30 pixel circle. And let's say that I just want to create a perfect pi wedge that's one quarter of my circle. If I go to my properties panel and click these three ellipses, it'll bring down more options. And I can manually edit the pi angles. I can change the end to 90 degrees, and if I leave the start angle at zero, I have a quarter pi piece. I can go back and change this to 180, and now I have a semicircle. I can also change my start to 90 degrees and the end to 180. And the wedge is now taken out of the top left corner. If I go 90-270 I'll get a semicircle on the left side. If I start at 60 degrees and end at zero, I'll get a circle with a small wedge removed in the top right. 060 gives me the inverse. I can also use the invert tool to switch back and forth. I'm going to press V on my keyboard, and you'll notice that this is still showing that my shape is 30 by 30 pixels because it's still reading as my original circle. Remember my full circle was 30 pixels in diameter, which this can't possibly still be 30 by 30 pixels. To correct this, I can either go over to my Shape Builder tool on the toolbar, or I can press Shift M for the keyboard shortcut. I'll click once inside my Shape and I'll press V. Now if I go to the Shape menu, it shows that this size is 1,512.99 pixels, which accurately shows the size of this new shape. So now I know this shape is no longer a circle with an effect applied to it, but I have this entirely new shape. Now that we've reviewed how to edit our basic shapes by adjusting anchor points and using the rotate and reflect tools, let's dive further into using the Shape Builder tool to divide and combine shapes in the next lesson. 8. Editing Shapes: Shape Builder Tool: Outside of manipulating anchor points, you can also create complex shapes using the shape builder tool. The first thing that I need is overlapping shapes. I'm going to select this shape that I created earlier. If you'll remember, these are still individual pieces. I'll press command Z to undo that move. And I'm going to select all of these and press Shift to open the Shape Builder Tool. As I hover over the Shape, you'll see this grid that indicates the new shapes that I can create. If I click inside any of these overlapping areas, I will divide these pieces into new shapes. I'll press V on my keyboard, and I'll click just outside of the shape to deselect it. And now I can select this piece that is cut out from the original. I'll press command Z to undo that move. And if I want to select more than one piece, I simply click and press Shift to select multiple pieces. Then I can simply slide these off to the side. And now I can use the new set of shapes that I've cut out, or I can use the remaining pieces of my original shape. I can also use the shape builder tool to merge shapes. Again, I'm going to select all of these and press Shift M on my keyboard. As I hover, I can click and drag across any areas of the selected shapes and merge them together. I just click and drag across sections to merge them. You can see now as I hover over the grid that it's showing the boundaries of these new shapes. This is a piece and this is separate, and so is this one. Again, I'll press V on my keyboard, and I'll click outside. And now I can move the shape that is cut out from the rest of it, command Z to undo that. I can also create shapes from the negative spaces in between. If I press shift M to pull up the Shape Builder tool again, I can click inside this cut out area and create a new shape from the negative space. If I select a new fill color, I can click and it will fill my new shape with a new color. Again, I'll press V on my keyboard. Click outside. Now you can see that this is a new shape and so is this one. It's important to know that you have to have overlapping shapes to combine them. If I were to select these two shapes and open the shape builder tool, if I try to merge these shapes, they won't merge because they're not connected. I have to press V on my keyboard. I'll move this shape up so that it overlaps the shape above it. If I select these, you'll see now that there's an overlapping area right here. Now I can press Shift M, and I'll merge these two shapes. I'll press V and click outside. And now I have one shape. If you're having trouble using the shape tool, just make sure that the two shapes you're trying to merge aren't disconnected. They may appear connected because they're close to each other, but they may not be quite overlapping. The last way that the Shape Builder tool can be helpful is by resetting a shape after an effect is applied. If I press M on my keyboard and I click to create a 50 pixel rectangle, I'm going to press V, and I'm just going to move this over a little bit. I'll press R to open the rotate tool and I'll rotate this while holding shift and option to create a copy at a 45 degree angle. If I press V on my keyboard, you'll now see that it says it's 50 pixels by 50 pixels. But this original square was 50 pixels by 50 pixels. And this is obviously extending beyond the square, it's not giving an accurate size. If I press Shift M on my keyboard, and then I click once inside my shape, and then I press V again. You can see now that the size has been updated and it's almost 71 pixels. I can change it to 50 pixels. Now I have a diamond shape that is truly 50 pixels by 50 pixels. Sometimes when you alter a shape by rotating it or converting a circle into a pie wedge like in the last lesson, Illustrator still reads it as the original shape with an effect added. You can use the Shape Builder tool to reset that bounding box. When you're building these geometric patterns, you want to have accurate sizes for your shapes. Those are the basic elements of using the Shape Builder tool to divide and combine shapes. In the next lesson, we'll use the effect tool to add texture to our shapes. 9. Editing Shapes: Effects: So far we've been dealing with smooth, clean shapes, but we can also add effects to them to make them look more irregular texture inorganic using tools. In Illustrator, the first thing I'm going to do is select all of these and delete them because we don't need them anymore. And I'll press M on my keyboard and click once to create a long rectangle. I'll make it five pixels wide and 200 pixels tall. And click, okay. I'll press V on my keyboard and I'll just slide this to the center with my object selected. I'm going to go up to distort and transform and select Roughen. I'll slide this over. The first thing that I'm going to change is the size. I can arrow up or down to change the size, I just want it to be slight, so I'll leave it at 2% I can also change the amount of detail. If I arrow down, I'll just reduce the detail, leave that at two. And I'll change this to absolute. I'm going to change this from sharp corners to smooth. Now I have a slight wave to my rectangular shape. I'm happy with that. I'll press okay. Once I'm happy with the effect, I need to go up to the Object menu and select Expand Appearance. Now I have this new shape. Rather than it being a shape with an effect applied, it's now a full shape and I can manipulate the anchor points. This is one way to create an irregular, organic shape. I'm going to click option and click and drive to create a copy. And I'll add more effects to this one. Right now I have this irregular wavy shape, but I might want to also add a textural effect. So I'll go back up to the Effects menu. At the bottom here I have these Photoshop effects in the Effects gallery. It's important to keep in mind that if I use any of these effects, it's going to turn my vector shapes into pixels. And then I'll need to use the image trace tool to turn them back into vectors after the effect is applied. Adding textures is optional, but it's good to know how to do this. I can pick from one of these options. I'll select brushstrokes and Spatter. And it's going to bring up this new menu. You can see now that I can access these other effects from this menu as well. And you're welcome to choose a different option if you like, or you can follow along with the one that I'm using. Some of these work better than others to give you a good texture, but you'll just have to experiment with them. Now, I'm going to choose spatter, and I can adjust the radius of my spatter and the smoothness until I find a good balance that I'm happy with. I'll press okay. Now I have a spatter effect applied to my wavy shape. It's quite pixelated compared to the original shape because it's no longer a vector object. I'm going to go up to object and expand appearance first because this is no longer a vector shape. If I go to my layers panel, you'll see that it's an image and it's no longer a path. So I'm going to need to vectorize it. And I'll open the image shaped tool. I'm just going to click and make sure that my image is selected. Now I can see my image trace tool options. I'm going to start by selecting a preset. Now each one of these work differently, and you may want to experiment to find what works best for your particular image. I'm going to select high fidelity photo and Illustrator will show my initial vector results. I can go back to the image trace panel and make adjustments. I can change the number of colors and I may want to select a limited color palette and change this to two colors. Because I don't have any gradients or shading in my shape, I can reduce the number of paths. Maybe that was too much. I'll increase it. I want to keep a little bit of that rough texture. I can change the method to cut out paths. And then I'll just ignore color to remove that white background. And you'll notice that the other shape is not visible because my white background has been removed. If you're following along, you can use the same settings, or you can experiment with the image trace options until you're happy with the results. Now every time you use this, it's going to be a little different and unique. Once I'm happy with my shape, I'll go back up to my Object menu, and I'll click Expand. I'll press okay. And now I see my anchor points, which means this is a vector object. Again, I'll close my image trace panel and I'm ready to make a pattern with this new textured stripe. In a previous lesson, we created a stripe pattern with a smooth stripe. But aligning in irregular shape can be a little trickier. I'm first going to move my texture shape so that the bottom is somewhere in the middle of my artboard. Now my R board is still 200 pixels. I'll press shift command M, and I'm going to move it zero pixels horizontally and 200 pixels down. I'll make a copy. And you can see that where these overlap, it looks okay. But I can also make adjustments to smooth out the transition even more. I'll press Z on my keyboard, and I'm just going to zoom in here a little bit so you can see this better. I'll press A and I'm going to select my top stripe so that I can manage these anchor points. Let's say I want to connect this here, so there's no gap. I can select my anchor point and I move it down. Until I have this smooth transition from one stripe to the next. Now where these meet up, it's nice and smooth and I can adjust the other side as well. I want to make sure I'm making changes to only the top shape because I don't want to edit the bottom. I'm editing the one shape. I'll adjust the handles on this anchor point until I have a smoother transition on this side. I can continue adjusting anchor points until I'm happy with the transitions from one stripe to the next. You may want to make additional adjustments depending on your shape. I'll select the bottom stripe. Press V to open selection tool and I'll delete it because I don't need it anymore. I'll select this top stripe. I'll press Shift command M and move it zero pixels horizontally and 200 pixels vertically. And press Copy. Now both shapes are identical and my transitions are nice and clean. I'll press option command zero to zoom back out. And now I'm ready to create a continual stripe pattern using this textured stripe. I'll move this one off to the side. For now, I'll select both of these shapes and press shift command M. And I'll move it 20 pixels to the right, and I don't want to move it vertically at all. I'll press Copy and then press command D to duplicate that action to repeat the stripe several times across my artboard. Next I need to move this stripe that's along this far right edge over to the left. I'll press shift command M, and I want to move it negative 200 pixels to move it to the left and zero pixels vertically. I'll press copy. Next, I need to create my bounding box. So I'll press M on my keyboard and I'll click to create a 200 pixel bounding box in the background. I'll press Okay and I want to make sure that this has no fill and no stroke. Next, I'll align it to my artboard and I'll press command shift left bracket to send it all the way to the back. If I open up my layers panel, you'll see that my background bounding box is at the bottom, so it's all the way in the back. I'll just press Space Bar and use the hand to drag this over a little bit. Next I want to create a background color. I'll press command C and command to paste it in front. And I'll give this one a fill color. I'll select all of these and drag them over to create a pattern swatch. And then I'll press Z on my keyboard to zoom out just a little bit and slide this over. I'll press to create a square and fill it with a new pattern. Now I have a continual striped pattern with a textured, irregular stripe. If I want to make this repeat a little less uniform because these all line up, I can select this first set and then hold shift to select every other stripe. And I'll press Shift command M. I don't want to move them horizontally, but I just want to move them up. So I'm going to move them negative 50 pixels vertically. And I'll hit, okay, I'll select everything and create my pattern. Now my pattern is more irregular. I could also move each stripe separately so that it's at a different height, and that would really vary it up and give it a nice organic look. Now that we know how to edit basic shapes and give them textures, we're ready to start creating more detailed patterns. In the next lesson, we're going to start by adding details to the basic scallop pattern. 10. Adding Details: Scallop Patterns: In the last several lessons, we've reviewed the basics of building a pattern and illustrator, and we learned how to edit basic shapes to have complexity and texture. Let's take the skills we've learned and apply them to creating more detailed and interesting patterns. In this lesson, we're going to level up our scallop pattern by adding details to the basic form. The first thing I'm going to do is select all of these objects and delete them. And then I'll press option command zero to fit my artboard to screen. Next, I want to add some color palettes so that I have them ready as I build my patterns. I've created a set of color palettes as a resource for this class that you can find in the Project and Resources tab. Once you've downloaded the PDF, you can open the file. And Illustrator and I actually have it opened right up here. Now the easiest way to add these color palettes to your pattern file is to go up to the menu here on the Swatches panel. Go to the bottom and select Save Swatch Library as AI. I'll leave the name as is. And I'm going to save it in the default Swatches folder. And then I'll press Save. Now I need to go back up to my geometric patterns file and go down to the bottom of my Swatches panel. To the Swatch Library's menu. I'll select from the user defined section and find that new color palette. It's going to open up a new panel. I'll just expand this a little bit, and you can see I've got all of these organized into color palettes. I simply click on each one of these folders to add them to my Swatches panel in this file. And I have a main set of colors in the first palette. And then I've grouped them into several harmonious color combinations that you're welcome to use. But you can feel free to create your own palettes as well. Now that we have our color palettes ready to go, we can start building our pattern. We're going to expand on the basic scallop pattern that we learned in an earlier lesson by adding some details. I'll start by pressing L on my keyboard and clicking once to create a 100 pixel ellipse. And press okay, I'll give it a new fill color from my color palettes. I'll click to create another circle. And I'll make this 110 pixels. And press okay, I'll fill this one with a different color. I'll press V on my keyboard and select both of these circles and use the Align tools to center them at the top. If I click this drop down menu, you'll see that I have this Align to selection. Rather than aligning to my artboard, I'm aligning my circles to one another. I'll click to deselect these. And then I'm just going to select the small circle. I want to position the small circle just inside the edge. So I'll press Shift command M and move it five pixels down. And press, okay, I want to create a border of these little dots all around my circle. I'll press R on my keyboard. I'll select the rotation point and drag it to the center of my yellow circle. There we go. And I'll press Option and click once. And then again to bring up the rotate menu, I'm going to rotate these 20 degrees. Press Copy. Then before I do anything else, I'll press command D several times until I've copied these circles all around. I'll press V on my keyboard and I want to create another set of circles In set a little bit. I'll select this one, Press Shift Command. This time I'll move it down 15 pixels and press Copy. I want to elongate this circle. I'll press A on my keyboard and select the bottom anchor point. I'll hold down Shift and press the arrow key once. And that's going to shift that one anchor point down ten pixels. And now I have this elongated petal shape. I'll press V on my keyboard to select my shape. Again, similar to the last circles. I want to rotate this from the center of my yellow circle. I'll press R on my keyboard and drag this rotation point to the center. I'll press Option. And then click once, and then again to open the Rotate menu. You can see that 20 degrees just barely rotates this one because it's closer to the center, I want to rotate it a bit more. I'll make this 40 degrees and press copy once again. Before I do anything else, I'll press command D to finish out that circle. I'll press V on my keyboard. I want to finish with a dot right in the center. So I'll select this top one again and press Command shift M. And I'm going to move this down 40 pixels and press Copy. Now I have this symmetrical design that I can use for my scallop pattern. But some of these elements are going to get cut off by the overlapping circles. To check the areas that will be hidden, I'll select my background circle and press shift command M, and I'll move it 50 pixels to the right and 50 pixels down and press Copy. Next I need one on the other side. I need to go negative 100 pixels and zero pixels vertically. And press Copy. If I select all of these, you can see where these circles are going to overlap and they'll create that scallop shape. This bottom half of circles and the bottom half of the petals are going to be hidden by the pattern. I'll click just outside to deselect and then I'm going to hold on shift as I select each of these, and then I can delete them. If I leave them, they're going to disrupt my pattern flow. Now, I'm left with only the shapes that are going to be visible. I do have this blank space here that I want to fill in. I'll deselect and then select this one shift command. And I don't want to move it horizontally, but I'll move it down 40 pixels. And press copy. Let's check this. Yeah, that fits nicely in that space, and it's not going to be cut off by the repeat. I no longer need these bottom two circles. I'll select all of these and group them by pressing command G. Now I can move them around as a group. Next I need to create my background bounding box. So I'll press M on my keyboard and click, and I'm going to create a 100 pixel square. I'll give it a new fill color for now so you can see what I'm doing. And I'm just going to center this right about the middle of my circle. I'll press shift command left bracket to send it to the back. And I'll select the group. And I'm going to start building my pattern. I'll press shift command M, and I want to move it 100 pixels to the right and zero pixels down. And press Copy. And you can see it aligns up right next to each other perfectly to create that initial row of scallops. Next I'll select the top left, and I'll press shift command M. And this time I want to move it 50 pixels to the right and 50 pixels down to create that scallop repeat and press copy. And I need to bring it to the front with shift command right bracket. If I select everything, I can check to see that this is lining up. I don't need to make a copy on either side because it's not falling across the edge. Next I'll select the top two, Press Shift command M. And I don't want to move it horizontally, but I do want to move it to the bottom 100 pixels and press copy shift command. Right bracket will bring it to the front. Now the bottom row is at the front, the middle row is behind it, and then the top row is at the back. I'll drag to select everything and make sure it's lining up everything that crosses an edge is copied to the opposite side. My pattern is ready. The last thing I need to do is go up to my layers panel and select my background box. Remember that I filled it with a color so you can see my square. And now I need to make sure that it has no fill and no stroke, so that it'll create my pattern tile. I'll select all of these and drag them up to the swatches panel. I'll press on my keyboard to zoom out a little bit and use the Space bar to grab the hand tool and move this over, press M and draw a square, and then I can fill it with my pattern. You can see that I've got this nice symmetrical scallop. Unlike earlier, where the circles themselves were creating the scallop shape, this time the design I created is making the scallop. My yellow circles create a frame that helps space out the design and become a solid background color. Which is why I didn't need to add a filled square in the background. This is one way to enhance our scallop design. I encourage you to experiment with your own designs. You could try a multicolor one where you add different colors to the dotted details. Or you could create two different designs and alternate them to create some variation. Just have some fun with it. Next let's create a scallop with concentric lines. I'll press V on my keyboard and select everything and delete it. I'll press command option zero and fit artboard to the screen, Close that. I'll press L on my keyboard and draw another ellipse. This time it's going to be 110 pixels. I'll press, okay, I'm going to fill it with this cream color. I'll press V on my keyboard, and I'll just drag it up here a little bit. And I want to create a semicircle from this. I'll open the properties panel. I'll click More Options. I'll create a semicircle by changing the pi end angle to 180 degrees. Now to make sure it's the right size, I need to turn this into a shape shift M and click once. And now it's showing a height of 55 pixels, which is correct because I cut my 110 pixels circle in half. I'll press M on my keyboard so I can create a 110 pixels square. Press. Okay, press V on my keyboard, and I'll drag it right up below the semicircle so that it aligns perfectly at the bottom. If I select both shapes, you'll see that that square sits right below the semicircle and they're aligned to the center. I'll press shift M and drag to merge these into one shape. I'll drag this up just a little bit. Now I have this nice arched shape. Now for this design, I want to create a set of concentric rounded arches that are moving inward. I'll go up to my object menu, Choose Path Offset Path. This will offset the shape so that it aligns properly. Right now it's offset ten pixels, it's expanding outward and making the shape larger. What I want to do is shrink it. I want to make that negative ten pixels. Now it's going to create a duplicate that is shrinking inward ten pixels at a time. And I'll press okay. It creates a new arch shape that I can fill with a new color. If I go up to my layers panel, you'll see that I have two shapes. Now I'm just going to repeat those steps to create more arches. Object path, offset, path. I'll keep the same parameters, so I'll click Okay. And then I'll give it a new color object path, offset path. Click Okay, and fill it with a new color object path, offset path. Click. Okay, Let's make this one yellow. Lastly, object offset path. Click. Okay, We'll finish it off with that original cream color. Now my arches are offset evenly and they remain in proportion. Next, I want these to line up at the bottom, but I don't want to stretch out the. If I were to select all of these shapes and then select a line to the bottom, you'll see that now it changes the spacing between the top. This is not the look I'm going for in this particular instance, I'll press command Z to undo that. Instead, I'll press A and select all of the bottom anchor points, and I'll align those to the bottom. Now my lines are stretched out, but my arches remain proportional. I'm going to select all of these and press V on my keyboard. And then I'll group them with command G. I'll go up and close my layers panel. Press M on my keyboard to create a 100 pixel background square. Okay, I'll fill it with a background color so you can see what I'm doing. Press V and then I'm going to drag this up a little bit, and I'll select my square. And I'm going to align it so that the top corner of my square is roughly the center of the small interior arch. The shape is falling across the bottom border of my bounding box. But because my elements overlap each other, the front elements will cover up the bottom and it won't be visible. I should be good. I'll press Command shift left bracket to send my background box to the back. And I'll select my Arch group and press shift command M to move it 100 pixels horizontally and zero pixels vertically. Now remember my shape is 110 pixels wide, but my background bounding box is 100 pixels wide. That's what I want to use now, because my arches are ten pixels larger than my pattern tall, these overlap a little. I did this intentionally because where they overlap, it maintains the spacing between my arches. As you move from one color to the next, everything stays consistent. My cream color is going to act as a bit of a background color. Now I'll select the top left arch, press shift command M and move it 50 pixels to the right and 50 pixels down. Press copy and shift command right bracket to bring it to the front. I'll select everything because my shape is wider than the background box. The outer arch is crossing these sides, but you can see that everything crossing the border is cream colored. I don't need to make any copies as it's all going to blend together. It's also overlapping the top edge because of my extended arch. I do need to make sure that this is copied to the bottom edge. I'll select the top row, this middle row, And press shift command M. I don't want to move it left or right, but I want to move it 100 pixels to the bottom of my bounding box and press Copy. It's already sitting in the front. If I go to my layers panel, you'll see I've got my bottom in the front and then my second row, and then the third, and then the top row is at the back. I still have my filled background box. I need to make sure that has no fill and no stroke to create my pattern. I'll select everything. I'll drag it to create a new pattern. Once again, I'll press Z to zoom out, press the Spacebar to move this over, Press M on my keyboard, and then create a square. I'll just close my layers panel. I'll fill this with my new pattern. You can see that my pattern is nicely repeating and nothing is getting cut off. Before we wrap up, let's make a modification to our arches to see a slight variation. And I'll delete all of these extras. And take my original shape, I want to add an effect like we did in the last lesson. I'll open the effect menu. I'll use Distort and transform. And then Roughen, that's a little crazy. I'll tone that down a bit, maybe 1% I'll make the details. Let's see, three. Yeah, I like that. I'll select smooth and try absolute. I think I'll leave that a relative and click. Okay, let's see what that looks like. Yeah, I've got this drippy paint effect and I like the organic look of these lines. I'll select it and go up to object and expand appearance. Now that effect is permanent and my vector shape has been updated. We're ready to build the pattern. I still up my bounding box. I'll just go through the same steps. Shift command M 100 pixels right, zero pixels down, copy. I'll select this one. Shift command M, 50 pixels, 50 pixels. Copy command shift right bracket to bring it to the front. And I want to hold shift to select all of these. Shift command M, zero pixels, 100 pixels copy. I'll select everything and create the new pattern swatch space bar to move this over and test the pattern. Now I have this irregular hand drawn look to my arches. One more variation I can make with this pattern is to change the spacing of my scallops. I'll delete all of these bottom arches. I'll go to the layers panel and select my background box. I want to make it taller. I'll make the height 150 pixels. Now I have a rectangular pattern tile. I'm just going to drag this down a little bit to recenter it. I still have the 100 pixel width, but now I have 150 pixels for the height. If I press shift command M, I'll still move at 50 pixels to the right, but halfway down is 75 pixels. Then I'll press copy. If I select all of these, you'll see that the top of my middle arch doesn't cross the top edge. All I need to move are the top two. I'll press shift command M, zero pixels horizontally, 150 pixels. And press Copy. I also need to arrange these in the right order. Shift command right bracket to move this one to the front. And then I need to select the bottom two and shift command right bracket. Now these are stacked in the appropriate order. I'll select everything. Drag it to my swatches panel, and let's test this one out. Now I have an elongated version of the scallop. I'll right click Transform Scale, And I'll scale it to 50% And I only want to transform the patterns. And click Okay. This is another way to vary our scallops. You can play with the spacing of your rows and your columns to create an asymmetrical scallop. Now that we've practiced adding details and variation to the scallop pattern, in the next lesson, we're going to have some fun adding details to the basic OG pattern. 11. Adding Details: Ogee Patterns: In the last lesson we added some embellishments to the basic scallop pattern. In this lesson we will create a basic G pattern and then add some fun details to it. I'll press L on my keyboard and I'm going to click and create a 100 pixel ellipse. I'll press V on my keyboard, and I'm just going to move this right up to the top of my artboard. I'll press Shift Command. And I don't want to move it left or right, but I want to move it down 100 pixels. I'll press Copy. I'll press Shift and select both of these circles. I'll press R on my keyboard to rotate them, and they'll automatically start rotating from the center. If I hold down shift, it will lock the rotation. And I'll also press option to create a copy. I've rotated this to a perfect 90 degree angle. I'll press V on my keyboard and select everything, and now I've got these overlapping circles. With the selected, I'll press Shift M and click to cut these overlapping sections. Press on my keyboard, click right outside. And then select these pieces and delete them. I'm left with these cut out shapes. If you'll notice, it's the same as that basic scallop shape we worked with in the first lesson. To create the basic G shape, I want to rotate the top and bottom shapes 180 degrees. We'll start with the top, and I'll select it and press R and start rotating from the center, holding shift to lock it at 180 degrees and let go. I'm going to give this a different color so you can see it a little better. I'll go ahead and color the bottom one as well. Press R to rotate it while holding shift and rotate it 180 degrees and let go. We've created the basic OG shape, which has this S curve. You can see it's just four interlocking scallops. I can also rotate the sides instead of the top and bottom to create the same shape turned 90 degrees. I'll just press command Z to undo those steps. If I select the right side, I'll press R and rotate it. Holding shift, select the left side, press R and rotate it. Holding shift to lock it. I can also use this version of the OG because it creates an interlocking pattern. So they're interchangeable. I'll select both of these sides and fill them with a new color. And we'll start building the basic OG pattern. I'll select everything and press command G to group them. I want to drag this up to center it in the top left corner of my artboard. I'll press Z to zoom out a little bit. I'll move this over. I'll press Shift command to move it 200 pixels, which is the width of my artboard. And I'll press copy these line up perfectly. I'll press Shift to select them both. And press shift command M to move it down 200 pixels and press Copy To finish it off, I just need to move the top 1100 pixels right and 100 pixels down. And press Copy. And you can see the interlocking shape that it creates. If I press M on my keyboard, I'll create a 200 pixels square. I'll align it to the center of my artboard. Give it no fill and no stroke. And press shift command left bracket to send it to the back. I'll open my layers panel and you can see that I sent that all the way to the back. I'll click the layer group to select everything. Press V on my keyboard and I'll drag it over to create a new pattern. Press space bar for the hand tool to move this over to create a rectangle and then I'll fill it with the pattern. I'll close my layers panel. You can see that the interlocking shapes create that S curve. And you can see the original OG shape is created by the interlocking pattern. It doesn't matter which orientation you start with because it's interchangeable with this basic shape in mind. Let's add in some embellishments. I'll select my square. Delete it. And I'll also select all of these shapes and delete them as well. Save a little time. I'm going to select the first scallop pattern I created and drag it to the artboard. Because the basic OG shape is created with that same scallop shape. I can use these embellishments I've already created in this OG pattern. I'll press command shift G to ungroup all of these. I'll delete all the extras because I only need one. I'm going to center it at the top and press shift command G to ungroup these as well. I'll start by recoloring each of the elements, just to give this pattern a little variation. I'll select my background circle. I'll give it a new fill color, Maybe this one. I'll select this shape and give it a new color. I'll hold shift to select each of these. I'll make those light blue. I'll make the center circle a new color as well. That's good. I'll select everything and press command G to group them again. Next I'll press Shift command M. I don't want to move it horizontally, but remember I want to move at 100 pixels down and press copy. I'll press R so I can rotate this 180 degrees holding shift so it'll lock it. I'll select both of them. Press R on my keyboard and rotate them holding shift to make sure it's exactly 90 degrees and then option to copy it. Now I have my designs oriented for the next step. If I press Shift, I can select all of these groups and I'll press Shift M and click inside the overlapped sections. Press on my keyboard and click outside the group. And then I'll double click to enter isolation mode, so I can delete each section. And these are grouped together, so I have to double click again to exit isolation mode. Same thing on the other side. Double click, select these and delete both of them. Then double click to exit isolation mode. Now I need to rotate the sides. I'll select the right one. Press R on my keyboard to rotate, press V, select this group, press R and rotate it holding shift so that it locks in place. You can see these embellishments created an interesting pattern inside this shape. I'll select all of these and press command G to group them. I'll move them to the top corner. I can start building my pattern command shift M, move it 200 pixels, zero pixels, and press copy. Select my other group, shift M, zero pixels, 200 pixels, and press Copy. Lastly, I'll press command M and move 100 pixels to the right and 100 pixels down and press Copy. Press M and make a 200 pixel bounding box and press okay. I'll align it to the center vertically and horizontally. Give it no fill and no stroke and shift command left bracket to send it to the back. Once again I'll open my layers panel and you can see that I sent that all the way to the back there. I'll drag to select everything and make the new pattern swatch. Move this over press M to create a square and fill it with that new pattern. There we go, I'll scale this, press V and right click transform scale. And only scale the pattern 50% And let's close this up. I can see that I have this really interesting OG shape that's created from the same embellishment we used to create our scallops, the interlocking pieces, they almost look like chain links that twist back and forth. Now for simplicity's sake, I'm using the same design that I use for my scallop pattern. But you can really play around and explore whatever design you want with this and have a lot of fun creating some intricate patterns. You can also create a variation where the side shapes are different colors. I'll double click to get into isolation mode with this group. I'll select the background for this group and change the color. I think I'll select this green. I'll double click to get out, and I'll do the same on the other side. Double click to enter isolation mode, select the background and change it to green. Double click to exit. Now I can create a pattern with this color variation. I'm going to delete these. Press shift command M. I want to move it up into the left, so negative 100 and negative 100. I need to make sure transform objects is checked and press copy. Next, I'll copy to the corners shift command M 2000, press copy, hold shift to select the other one. Shift command M02. Hundred and copy. I should still have my background square. Let's open the layers panel. Yeah, it's still there. I'll drag to create my patterns. Watch. And I'll close my layers panel and select my square and fill it with this new pattern. And now I have a new variation. I encourage you to take a little time now and explore different ways to embellish the OG pattern. It's one of my favorite shapes. I hope you have a lot of fun with it. When you're ready, join me in the next lesson where we're going to start working on our final pattern of the class, a color blocking pattern. 12. Color Block Pattern: Building Shapes: So far we've embellished the scallop and OG patterns. I hope you've had fun exploring these on your own. The final geometric pattern we're going to make in this class is inspired by classic bow house designs. We'll use a grid structure to combine various shapes, like puzzle pieces to create interesting new forms. In this lesson, we'll start by making variations of our shapes that we can use to build our patterns. In the next lesson, we're going to start by making variations of a circle. I'll press L on my keyboard and click to create a 100 pixel ellipse. I'll press V. I'll start by turning this into a semicircle. I'll go over to my properties panel, select more options. I'll make this 180 degrees, then I'll select my circle, and press Shift M And click once. And now I have that semicircle. I'll just close my properties panel. I want to keep everything that we do to 100 pixels by 100 pixels. Let's move a copy of this by pressing shift command M and moving it down 50 pixels. Then I'll press Copy. Now I have two stacked semicircles that are 100 pixels squared. When combined, I'll press Option and Shift and drag to create a copy of this set. And now we can create a new variation. I'll select the top one, press R and rotate it, holding shift to lock it at 180 degrees and let go. Now I have a different orientation that I can use. I'll select both of these. Press option and shift and drag another copy. I'll select the top again and press R. This time I'm going to rotate at 90 degrees. I'll press V and select both shapes and align them to the right and to the bottom. With the selected, I'll press Shift M and click the center to cut it out. Then press V. Click right outside with the cutout selected. I'll press Shift command M and move it negative 50 pixels to the left and negative 50 pixels to move it up and press okay, now I have a new variation from these same semicircles. From here I can select this top piece, press option and shift to drag it over, I'll press Shift Command and move it 50 pixels and 50 pixels and make a copy. Then I'm going to select both of these. Press R on my keyboard and rotate from the center, so I'll hold shift to lock it and press option to make a copy and let go. And now I have this rounded X shape. I'll select both of these, press option and make a copy. And then I'm just going to select the bottom and press R and rotate. And now I have a different variation of the shape. Once again, I'll select this first set press option and shift to drag a copy. And then with both of them selected, I'll press R on my keyboard. I'm going to rotate holding shift and option to make a copy. This creates a simple floral shape, but it's more than 100 pixels. With the size locked, I'm going to decrease it to 100 pixels by 100 pixels. And now it's the same size as the rest of my sets. I'll select all of these. Press option to drag a copy over and press Shift to create some cutouts. I'll click inside each of these larger petal shapes, then I'll press V on my keyboard and hold Shift to select each of these outer pieces. Hold Shift, I'll drag it to the side. Now I have a new version of the flower. I also have what's left behind, so I can use both pieces. If I select this one, I can resize it to 100 pixels squared as well. Now I've got two new flower shapes from my original. This is just an example of the various shapes you can make from a simple circle. Now let's work with squares. I'll press M on my keyboard and make a 100 pixels square. I'll press the minus sign for the delete Anchor Point tool and I'll delete this corner. I'll press V and you can see I now have a right triangle. I'll press option to make a copy. I'll go up and change the size. And with it locked, I'll make it 50 pixels. Now it's half the size. From here, I'll press Shift command M, and I'll move it 50 pixels right, And press Copy. I'll select them both, press shift command M, and this time I only want to move them up 50 pixels and press copy. I now have a set of four right triangles, evenly spaced. I can create a lot of variations with this set. I'll press option to make a copy and command D to duplicate that a couple of times. For this first one, I'll select the bottom left, press R and rotate it. Holding shift, and this creates a new formation. I could do the same thing by pressing R shift, rotate, and then select the one above it. Press R, hold shift and rotate. Here's a second variation. If I select the bottom two, press R and rotate. I'll get something slightly different. I can continue to make various combinations of these triangles, but you get the idea. I'll start over with a new square. This time I'll press A on my keyboard, select this top anchor point and round it all the way. Now I've created a quarter pie piece. Once again I'll make another 100 pixel square. Press A on my keyboard and select the top corner, but double click the corner round and select the inverted round option. I'll make the radius 100 pixels, and Illustrator will change it to 99.99 but I'll press okay, Now I have the inverse of the first one. I can play with the corners of my squares. Lastly, I'll press M on my keyboard and create another 100 pixel square. This time I'll press R and rotate it, locking it to 45 degrees. If I press V on my keyboard, you'll see that it still shows its 100 pixels square shift. M click once and now it's showing the correct size. With it locked in proportion, I'll change it to 100 pixels. Now I have 100 pixel diamond. Lastly, I'll make a copy by pressing option and dragging over I'll press the minus symbol for the Delete Anchor Point tool. Press V and I have a half diamond to keep it 100 pixels square. I'll press Shift command and move it 50 pixels right and press copy together. These are 100 pixels square. These are several examples of what I can create from a basic square. Once I have my shape combinations created, I want to select each of them and press command G to group them. I need these to stay 100 pixels to use in my pattern. I don't want any of the pieces to shift around even a single pixel because that will throw everything off in my pattern. Precision is crucial for the pattern we'll be building in the next lesson. One last thing I want to do is modify the concentric arches we created in the scallop lesson. I'll go up to my swatches panel and I'll drag the pattern swatch onto my artboard. I'll press Command shift G to ungroup this, so I can select all of these extras and delete them. I'll select the original Shape, and I'll press Command Shift G to ungroup this set as well with them all selected. Press Shift M to bring up the Shape Builder tool. I'll separate the arches by clicking every other one. To cut it out, I'll press V on my keyboard. Click outside the group, and now I can select every other and delete them. I'll select everything Again, command G to group it, and I'm just going to give it one solid color. I have this concentric arch that I made earlier, but it isn't size to 100 pixels, so I need to resize it to fit the parameters of my pattern. I'll change the width to 100, making sure that it's locked so it stays in proportion. Now it's 100 by 150 pixels. So I'll press A on my keyboard and select the bottom Anchor Points, and press Shift Command. And I don't want to move them horizontally, but I want to reduce the length and move them up 50 pixels. And press, okay, now my arch is 100 pixels by 100 pixels and remains proportional. These are just a handful of examples of the various shapes you can create for your color blocking pattern. I encourage you to take a minute and build out some shapes, and you can build these exact shapes for practice. But I'd also encourage you to explore new variations on your own. And once you've made a set of shapes for yourself, join me in the next lesson so we can turn them into a pattern. 13. Color Block Pattern: Creating the Pattern: In the last lesson, we created several shape variations that are all 100 pixels wide and 100 pixels tall. I hope you've taken some time to work on your own and explore new shapes. In this lesson, we're going to take these 100 pixels square shapes and lay them out in a grid to create new combinations and interesting formations in the negative spaces between them. Now we need to start by creating our artboard. You can use the same size as me, but you can also expand any size you prefer, as long as it's divisible by 100 pixels. I'll press Shift to bring up the artboard tool, and you can also find it here on the toolbar. I'm going to type 500 pixels, and then press V on my keyboard To get back to the selection tool, the next thing I need to do is create guides that will act as visual cues for my pattern. I need to open up my rulers. I can either go up to view rulers, show rulers, or I can use keyboard shortcut command R to bring up my rulers. And you'll see them along the side and the top here. The first thing I need to do is click on my ruler and drag a guide onto my artboard. You want to make sure that your guides are unlocked. And you can see right now I can't move this guide. I'll press Option Command semicolon. And now I can select my guide and move it. You can also go up to View guides and you can lock and unlock guides from here. With it selected, I'll align it to the left side of my artboard. And I want to move this in 100 pixel increments. I'll press shift command M and move it 100 pixels to the right, and I don't need to move it vertically. And I'll press copy. I'll press command D to duplicate that action. Now my guides visually split up my artboard into 100 pixel columns. I'll repeat the same steps to create my horizontal guides. I'll click and drag one from the top, align it to the top shift command M zero and then 100 pixels. And press Copy. Then immediately press command D to Duplicate. And I don't want to move these guides out of alignment, so I'll lock them by pressing option command semicolon. Now if I try to select any of these, they're all locked. To turn my guides off, I can press command semicolon. And the same command semicolon turns them back on. While we will be using them as visual cues, your shapes will also snap to these guides as well. With our guides set up, it's time to start building our pattern. I'll use the spacebar to slide this over a bit because I've already selected some shapes to use for this pattern. Over here, you can follow along with me as a make this pattern. Or you can select a different set of shapes to make your own pattern. I'll select one of my shapes and drag it onto my artboard, and then I'll align it to the top left corner. I can press R on my keyboard and rotate this from the center, making sure to hold shift to lock it at either 9,100 or 270 degrees so that it stays aligned in that 100 pixel square grid. I'll select a new shape and drag it over. I'll align it to the top and to the left. And then press shift command. I want to move it to the grid space to the right, which is 100 pixels. And I don't want to move it vertically. I know the distance I need because it is one grid space to the right. If I want to move it here, I would need to move it 200 pixels. This grid helps you visualize the spacing and keep things straight. I'll press okay this time because I don't want to make a copy. I'll press R to rotate it. The positioning of these two shapes next to one another creates a new shape across my grid line. As I build my pattern, I want to explore the interplay of my shapes relative to each other. With it still selected, I'll press shift command M, and I want to move it to this space and create something similar. I'll move it to the left, negative 100 pixels and down 100 pixels, and I want to make a copy this time. I'll press R on my keyboard and I'll rotate it to align it relative to the first shape so that it mirrors this other one. And I'll keep going with these other shapes to build out a pattern. I'll think about how the shapes play off of each other as I position them next to one another. I'll take this one this time I'll align it to the bottom left corner. As long as you start by aligning it to a corner, you can select any corner you want. I'll press Shift Command. And I want to move this right below the last one. I'll need to move it up two spaces or negative 200 pixels and press Okay, When you first bring a shape onto the artboard and align it to a corner, you can move it and press. Okay, If you decide to move it to a new spot and want to make a copy, be sure you press copy so that you're leaving the original in place. I'll speed this up. As I continue to place my shapes into a pattern, I've got a good start to placing my shapes in a pattern. And I see some things that I like so far. I like how these shapes merge and these as well, and the curve of this one is mirrored by this one over here. Here's another new shape that's formed, and where it crosses my guides, it will break up the columns and rows of this grid. I can also see areas for improvement. For example, I don't like the size of this negative space. I'm going to select this shape and modify it. I'll press R on my keyboard and rotate it from center holding shift and I'll also press option to make a copy of it. And I'll lock it at 180 degrees and let go. Now I've broken up the negative space and this will draw the eye in a diagonal line down the pattern. It still mirrors the curve, but the space isn't so empty for this one. I'll rotate it holding option to make a copy. This time I'll leave it at 90 degrees. I don't want it to be exactly the same as this one because they're so close to each other. I'm using the same elements but changing them up. I also like how this curve of this shape flows into the next space and the negative space fills out a new shape. By continuing that line, I'll break up the negative space over here as well. I'll rotate this 180 degrees and hold option to make a copy again. I don't want it to be exactly the same shape. I'm going to slick both of these and I'll press R and rotate them both again and make copies. Now I have a new variation that looks different, but it still continues this shape into the grid space. I'll do the same thing with this last piece. I'll rotate it 90 degrees, holding option and shift. And then I'll rotate it again 180 degrees holding option and shift. This version flows into the one above and breaks up the negative space and crosses my grid line. It's similar to the shape that was created over here, but it's not exactly the same. Another thing I consider is repeating elements. For instance, I use this shape here and here, and they're both spaced out within my pattern, but the repeated elements help your eye move around the pattern. I can also recombine shapes to fill a space to change this shape. I'll double click this group, so I can select the top half and delete it. I'll double click to exit, and then I'll double click in this group, I'll select the top two and press command C. And then click out Command will paste it in front so it's pasted in the exact same position. And to move this down, I'll press shift command M, zero pixels horizontally and 100 pixels down. And press okay, now this is a new combination, but it's still 100 pixels. I think I'll repeat this new variation up here. I'll delete this shape because there's a lot of solid colors in that area. I'll select my new set and press command G to group it. Shift command M, and I'll move it to the left 100 pixels and up 300 pixels, making sure they're negative numbers. And press Copy. I like the way that breaks up the solid colors and add some interesting new combination. Once I've placed all of my shapes into a layout that I'm happy with, I'll add colors to define certain areas. I'll use about three or four colors plus a background color, and you can use as many as you want. But I would recommend limiting your palette to create some harmony. I'll start in the top corner, and this is grouped. To select one of these shapes, I need to double click to enter isolation mode. And now I can select this one and recolor it. I think I'll select a green for this one. I'll make this a cream color. I want to keep this one the same color because I want it to blend into the next one. But I can double click and select this one and recolor it. This new color redefines these shapes. I'll do the same thing here. I'll make this one green. I'll add a fourth color to this one. Let's add a darker shade of the peach color. These are the four colors that I'll use. I'll continue to recolor my shapes. I'll double clip this group. I'll change this to match the one above it. I'll make this a cream color. And I think I want it to be in front shift command right bracket to move it to the front because I want to continue the curve of that shape above it. You can use your colors to create new shapes and develop the lines of your shapes. I'll change this one to the same cream color to continue the shape above it. I'll make this one that darker color and this one green as I recolor my shapes, I'll also try to evenly distribute my colors throughout the pattern. I don't want a large section of one color that's going to draw your eye to it. I'll continue to recolor my elements and I'll speed this up a little bit. Recolored all of these elements. And you can see I've dispersed the colors throughout my pattern. As I was adding color, I thought about the fact that anything on the top row is going to repeat next to the bottom row. This darker peach color is going to sit next to this one along the bottom. The same way that these two blend together, this green color unites these separate shapes into one form. I made these all the same color so they would appear as one shape. And I rearranged the order of these shapes to bring the bottom left one in front so it wouldn't break up that line. These shapes blend into one here, similar to the top and bottom edge. Anything along the left side is going to sit next to the shapes on the right. So just keep that in mind as you add in colors. Once I have my pattern at a point, I like I can test the pattern. You can see I didn't use this last column because I didn't need it. And that's okay. I can see that my pattern fits in this grid at 400 by 500. So I'll press M on my keyboard and I'll click to create a background square of that size. I'm not going to align it to the center, I want to align it to the left and to the top so it fits the area of my pattern. I'll press Shift Command left bracket and send it to the back. I'll need to give it a new color. I'll choose a darker color because all of my other colors are pretty light. And this will add a nice amount of contrast. The last thing I need to do is create the background bounding box, command C to copy command B to paste in back then I'll give it no stroke and no fill. If I go up to my layers panel, you can see that I have the no fill, no stroke bounding box that's 400 by 500. And then my filled background square is right above it. And of course all of my shapes, I'll press V on my keyboard and I'll turn off these guides with command semicolon and you can see the pattern more clearly. I'll select everything and drag it over to create the pattern swatch. I'll zoom out just a little bit and slide this over. And press M and create a square. Let's test this out. I can take a look at the repeat and then make my assessment. This blends nicely. I like the shape that these pieces create. Even though I laid this out in a grid, some of the grid shape is broken up by the elements that join up to make a larger shape that crosses these grid lines. There are also elements that mirror one another. The curve of this shape is mirrored here without being identical. Same thing with this shape, which is mirrored in this section. I'm creating these really interesting shapes by placing a basic set of shapes next to one another in different pairings. I could sit here all day and play around with different combinations. You may have chosen different shapes to use. And I would encourage you to experiment with other shapes and combine them in interesting ways. Keep in mind that the larger your grid space, the more variety you can achieve within your pattern. The smaller your grid, the tighter your repeat is going to be. I'll stop here, but I want you to play around with your own grid layout. Once you're ready, join me in the next lesson where we're going to talk about how to make a few adjustments, including hiding any little hairlines and converting your layout to a half drop repeat. 14. Color Block Pattern: Making Adjustments: In the last lesson, we built our color block pattern. In this lesson, we're going to talk about how to assess our work and make adjustments. Including how to convert the grid layout to a half drop layout. We'll also talk about cleaning up and finalizing the pattern for a seamless repeat. I've made a few adjustments to my pattern to fix areas I didn't like. For instance, I didn't like how these were two different colors and I wanted to break up the cream and peach. I changed this shape to green. I also wanted to break up the cream and green in this section and the solid block of color. I made an adjustment to the colors and replaced a few of the shapes. You can continue to make adjustments as needed until you're happy with your pattern. Another thing that we can do to break up the grid layout is to create a half drop repeat. I'm going to delete this, and I'll slide this over a little bit. Press Z, and I'll zoom in to create a half drop. We need to accommodate a second column that is offset halfway down. I'll go to my layers panel and select both of my background shapes and they have a width of 400 pixels. So I need to double that to 800, making sure that I've got a line to artboard selected. I'll align it to the left side so it aligns with my pattern grid. Now I have the space to create my new column. I'll lock my background shapes for now. And then I'll drag select everything and press command G to group it this way, everything will move as one unit and I don't have to worry about missing any piece. I'll press shift command M. And I want to move one column to the right or 400 pixels. And then I want to move it halfway down or 250 pixels. I'll press Copy, and I have the beginning of my half drop with the group still selected. I'll press Shift Command M again. And I don't want to move it horizontally, but I do want to move it to the full height, back up to the top negative 500 pixels. And press copy. Now I've got a whole new column that is offset halfway down from the first column. I'll unlock both my background shapes and then I'll just close my layers panel. I'll select everything and create a new pattern swatch. I'll slide this over here and zoom out a little bit. And just create my square to test the pattern. You can see now how this shape repeats over and then halfway down instead of in a grid. I really like the half drop layout. You can try this on your pattern or you can try brick repeat. For a brick repeat, just double the height instead of the width and offset the pattern to the right. You may find you also want to recolor some elements once you change to a half drop or brick repeat. These are all things you can explore in your own pattern. One thing you may notice is a hairline slit, where two shapes meet across a grid line, or especially on the edges of your pattern. Now if you're having this issue, you could merge your shapes. And I'll go back over to this pattern and I'll press Shift command G to ungroup everything. Let's say I want to merge this shape with its counterpart at the bottom. I'll select it and press Shift Command. And I want to move it all the way to the bottom and make a copy. I'll ungroup this set with shift command G so I can select the top half. I'll hold shift and select the ones above it. And then press shift M. And I'll drag across to merge my shapes. I'll press V on my keyboard and you'll see that it shifted to the back. So I'll press shift command right bracket to bring it to the front. Now if I move this over here, you can see that it's one shape. I'll press command Z to undo that, and I can actually delete this piece because I don't need it. Next I want to move a copy back up to the top. I'll press shift command M and move it negative 500 pixels and make a copy. Now it crosses both borders as one seamless shape. I'll retest the pattern. If I had any hairline issues, this should ensure that there's no more issues. You can take all of the shapes that cross an edge or even shapes like this one that form a new shape and merge them. Now you want to make sure that you have finalized your pattern before you take this step, But it will help clean up any hair lines where two shapes meet if you're having that issue. This is just one example of a pattern I've created with these shapes. I'm going to show you a few additional patterns I created so you can see some different combinations. First, I have this pattern, it's a simpler design. I'm going to slide this over. If I drag the Swatch out, you can see the structure of this repeat. There are three shapes, this same starting piece, min, two semicircles, and the X shape, I just mirrored and rotated it to create the pattern, and it makes a cool braid. I also have this pattern which has a fractured look. It's made up of a bunch of those little tiny right triangle combinations and diamonds that I rotated over and over in different combinations. I decided to keep the colors limited to hide the grid repeat. I used the arches to create this pattern. Unlike the last one, I played with rounded corners and curves. For this pattern, you can see the structure of it here. I also made a variation of this small 100 pixel version by extending the lines using the direct selection tool. I moved the anchor points out another 100 pixels to double the length. You can create some shapes that go beyond the 100 by 100 pixels square. As long as you're in increments of 100, it should work. Next, I have this pattern. I'll drag the Swatch out so you can see it. This one was another rectangular shaped pattern. You can keep your patterns completely abstract, but as you build the pattern, you may find shapes start resembling real things. I have these shapes that are similar to what's in my other pattern, but they remind me of fruit. The arches meeting up to the semicircles remind me of roots or streams of water. Now the elements are still quite abstract, but the inspiration of nature themes helped me think through this pattern. Lastly, I created this pattern which really takes inspiration from floral Motise. I created several versions of abstract flowers and then staggered them in a diamond layout. Now you can see the same shapes used here, form stems, leaves, and petals. I created three different combinations. Again, they're still very geometric and abstract, but they do read as flowers. In your own pattern, you can go for something purely abstract or make a geometric botanical pattern that has recognizable forms. You're really only limited by your creativity and I'd love to see you explore lots of different ways to use your shapes. And this method of building patterns. If you explore larger grid layouts, I'd recommend you stick to round divisible numbers. For instance, if you wanted to work with a 1,000 pixel pattern tile that allows you to work with elements that are 25510020250 or even 500 pixel sizes. With those options, you can really play around with the size of your elements. As long as the size of your pattern tile is divisible by the size of your shapes that you're creating, then this technique will work. Have fun exploring these pattern adjustments, and then join me in the next lesson to learn how to recolor and export your work. 15. Recolor and Export: At this point, you should have completed your color blocking pattern along with your scallop and OG repeats. In this lesson, we're going to discuss some final tips including how to use the recolor artwork tool and how to save your file for export. One of my favorite parts of the pattern making process is seeing my pattern in different color ways. I love using the recolor artwork tool to scroll quickly through the options. I'll select my pattern filled square and click on the recolor artwork tool, which will open up this panel. There are quite a few options and tools you can use in the recolor artwork panel. But I'm just going to give you an overview of the tools I use the most. I went in depth into the recolor artwork tool options in my last class. If you're interested to learn more, you can check out that class called Service Pattern Workflow, Adobe Fresco to Adobe Illustrator. I'm going to go down to the advanced options and it'll open up a new panel. Now these are the tools I tend to use. The most often you'll see the current colors in this section and you can rearrange the color order. With this button, it randomly changes the order of the colors in your pattern. You can swap colors manually by dragging one color to another. And you can re order the colors you already have or choose an entirely new color palette. So I'm going to select this palette and it has the same number of colors as my current palette. It swaps out one color for each in my list. Once again, I can randomly reorder the colors or drag them around to swap them manually. If I choose a color palette that has more colors than my current palette, it will randomly select five colors to add first. And then I can click to re order the colors. But it also rotates through different five color combinations. So this one has six colors and one will be left out as I scroll through the options. I can also choose a color palette with fewer colors, like this one with only four colors. If I select this one, it'll combine two colors in my color palette to recolor with a single color. It chose my dark and light peach colors to combine and replace with this navy color. It recolors them with different shades to match the current values. I can also change which colors to combine by dragging the light peach to the cream color. Now all the shapes with these two colors will be replaced with different values of the same color in my new color palette. If you don't want to use a limited color palette, you can use a color palette with lots of colors. Like this first group, I'll go back and make sure that I'm using all of my colors of my original palette. And then I can randomly scroll through various color combinations to find something I like. You can use a preset color palette or take a group of colors you like and see what combinations come out of it. Once you find a color palette you like, you simply cook. Okay. And I don't want to save the changes. Now I have my pattern in a new color palette. It adds a new pattern swatch to the swatches panel, and it keeps the original swatch as well. I can continue to use the recolor artwork tool to recolor my pattern as much as I want. Next, I want to talk about different options for saving your file. One thing you can do is go up to your swatches panel and use the save Swatch library as AI, just as I showed you how to save the class color palettes in a previous lesson. This time it will include all of the pattern swatches we made in this class, along with all the color palettes with it saved as a swatch library. You can open up all of these pattern swatches and color palettes in another file if needed. That's one option. Another option would be to save it to your Adobe libraries. If I go up to Window and Open Libraries, it'll bring up the library's menu. I'll click to Create a new library, and I'm going to name it Geometric Patterns. Then click Create. Now I can simply take this square and drag it in here. Now my Patterns Watch is saved to my libraries. I can also save other elements. I'll select this shape and I'll drag to add it to my libraries. I could do the same with all the other shapes that I've created in this file. With it saved to my libraries, it's accessible on other devices where I'm signed into my Creative Cloud account. If I want to use this in a new file, I'd simply drag it into my workspace to use it Again, you can collect all of the assets related to your pattern in one place and have them accessible to use again later. I'll close this panel and delete this shape. You can also export your file in different formats if you want to share your project for this class, you can export it as a Jpeg and upload it to the project page. You may also need to save it as a PDF or other format for printing and sharing. To export it in any of those formats, you need to create an artboard in the size you need to export. Now so far I've been working in pixels, but I may need to export in a different unit of measurement like inches. I can either go up to file Document set up or press option command P. To bring up the document set up menu. I'm going to use this drop down menu to change the unit of measurements. I'll select inches and click Okay. I'll slide this over and I'll press Shift, and then draw out an artboard. I can go up here and reset the size that I need. Maybe I want eight, a two by 11. I'll press V to go back to the selection tool and I'll drag my pattern over to my artboard. I can position it to capture the part of the pattern I want. I can also write click Transform Scale. And I can scale it down and only transform the objects. Now I have a small scale version to share. And I can also increase the scale. And when I have it where I want it, I'll click okay. Once we have it positioned and scaled on our artboard, we can export it. I'll go up to File Export. As I can give it a new name. I can select a file location, and I can also select a format like P and G or Jpeg. I'll choose Jpeg, and I want to check use Artboard. It captures the area within my Artboard. Only I can select all of my art boards or range. In this instance, I want to select Artboard two, which is the one I just set up, and I'll click Export. Next, my Jpeg options come up. Now if I'm exporting this for print, I want to leave it as CMYK. If I was exporting this for screens like social media post, I could select RGB. I'll set the resolution. If I was saving this for printing, I'd want to choose 300 PPI. But if I'm just exporting it for use on social media or on the web, I may want to select 72 PPI. Instead, I want to make sure that Art Optimize is selected as well. And I'll click Okay. And that'll save my JP. If I want to export it as a PDF, I'll press Ship Command S, and I'll choose to save it on my computer. This time I'll change the format to Adobe PDF and I can rename it if needed and click Save. I have the option to preserve Illustrator editing capabilities. If I check this box, then my PDF can be opened in Illustrator with all the layers rather than as a flattened image in a PDF. So keep this in mind when choosing this option and whether you want someone to have access to all of your pattern elements and layers. When I'm ready, I'll click Save PDF. There are different export options for different uses, but for this class all you need is a Jpeg to upload to the projects and resources section of the class. I'd really love to see all the patterns you've created, so please share them. I'll wrap up the class with some final thoughts in the next lesson. 16. Final Thoughts: I hope you had fun taking this class and you created several gorgeous geometric patterns. Please continue to take what you've learned and explore more, because the possibilities are endless. And don't forget, I'd love to see what you created. So please share your project in the class gallery. You can share your thoughts and ask any questions you have in the discussion section of the class. I'd also love for you to leave a review. Reviews help other students discover the class and decide if it's right for them. I appreciate you taking the time to leave a review. If you enjoy this class and you want to learn more from me, you can check out my other classes here on Skill Share, click the Foll up button if you want to stay up to date and be the first to know what I'm working on next. As always, it's been an honor to teach you and I hope I'll see you in my next class.