How to Create a Cohesive Pattern Collection in Affinity Photo

1. Intro: Hello, and welcome to this wonderful class. My name is Sheleen and I am a Surface pattern designer and art teacher. In this class, I'm going to be teaching you how to make a cohesive pattern collection. Now, why should we have pattern collections? Pattern collections are really great for getting your work noticed. It shows that professionalism, it shows that you can understand about color palettes and how to work together with different patterns that work as a whole story. You can use these pattern collections if you work on a print-on-demand site or if you're pitching to some clients, it's a really great way to get your work noticed. In my experience, it has worked for me and I'm sure it will work for you too. First, what you will learn in these classes is how to do hero prints, how to do secondary or coordinating patterns, and then lender patterns. What is needed for them, what makes them separate from each other. Then I will end up showing you how to present it to potential clients or for your portfolio website. I'm excited to share with you how to create a wonderful, cohesive pattern collection. I hope you will enjoy it, and I can't wait to see what you will achieve. 2. What is a Pattern Collection: A pattern collection is a group of patterns with a common theme, style or color palette. These patterns are designed to work together to create a cohesive feel. A pattern collection usually has one or more hero prints that are complex and a variety of simpler coordinate or blender prints that complement the collection. Pattern collections can vary in size. Mini collections start at six to eight designs and full collections at eight to 12 designs. These designs can consist of multiple colorways. The hero prints are the most complex designs of your collection. Then you'll have secondary patterns or coordinates. They are the complimentary designs that are less complex, and then you have the blenders, which are the simple designs that complement the whole collection as well. So here we have Mel Armstrong, a wonderful Surface pattern designer, I really wanted to show you her work as she designs in collections really well and it'll be great to have a look at what she does. She designs for spoon flower and she's had a lot of recognition with other clients, bigger clients, and she just does things really professionally. Let's take a look. So here is Lake Life. This is the title that she has chosen for her collection, and she uses a limited color palette. We have blues, you've got a light blue and a dark blue gray, light gray and a dark gray, white and a dusty pink. Then you've got touch of orange in there as well. You have the main print, which is the hero. Then you have your coordinates. She's got a couple of coordinates. And of course, blenders. It's also good to package it all together in mockups to display your work. Now I'm going to take you over to my website. So as you seen this pattern before, the tigers. I've got my hero with my tigers, and then here my second hero. Because it has a lot of detail in it as well. Then we have the coordinate, which has some detail in it, but it doesn't have as much elements involved. The leaves here, the tropical leaves and then tropical floral, which this one has two elements, two or three elements there, and then we have the one with the leaves which is just got the one it's got two elements, it's simplified, but yet it has detail. Then we have the blender, which is very simplified, usually quite spaced out with the blenders. You don't have a lot of things going on. Poker dots are quite common, but you can play around with that and then you've got your stripes. Linear patterns. Here you have another collection here with the rabbits, bunny picnic. You can see I have the bunnies as my hero print. It's got all the little details there with the carrots and the grass. Also looking at having a variety of rabbits. They're not just the same color. It's just something different, bit whimsical. And it creates a bit variety of variation in the print. Then you come over to the coordinate. I've got the bunches of flowers and then I've added ribbons, which is a trend. It's good to add a bit of a trend in there as well with some little dots in the background. Then we have here, I've taken inspiration from the rabbits. Again, this is a coordinate as well. Then the blenders which are more simple. I've just used this one here is just the same flower repeat. I have a simplified pattern here, taking inspiration from poker dots and changing it by using triangles and then I've got a Gina pattern here, which is your blender. I'm going to take you to the next class and I'm going to talk to you about how to do your ideas for your pattern collection. 3. Picking a Theme and Drawing Ideas: Picking a theme. When it comes to theme ideas, we need to think of an idea that's going to work for our pattern collection. You have the evergreens that can be used at any time of the year. You've got animals, holidays and florals. Animals are used so many times interchangeable with current trends, holidays, you have Christmas, Easter, Valentine's Day, and there's other holidays as well that are included. Then you've got florals, which can be used all year round and it can adapt to the different seasons to different styles. There are some trends that you can work on. As you can see on the left hand side of the screen, there's a range of different styles, trends that you can use as an example. These are the trends that have been used this year and are ongoing as you can see, I'm just going to skip through some of them. We've got pretty kitties swaning around. These are playful titles dealing with animals, banana ram, bananas, lobster, patchwork, Granny square. Patchwork and Granny square are together like quilting style of design. Then you've got groovy flowers, mushrooms has been in for quite a while. So that's coming back in again. The tropical prints, they've been in quite a bit and then moving down, you've got bows and ribbons, of course. So I have chosen a theme and I'm going to make it into a story. So to set a story for your collection is really important. What it does, it gives the customer a reason to buy. It gives a story that they can resonate with. It might even give them memories to make them feel nostalgic about something. People love stories. So when you create a collection, make your story and make it be known. So Min's is called Granny's Cottage. Base it on Granny Square Granny's Cottage and linked all other things that work around that story or that theme. So I'm imagining a granny or a grandma in her cottage. She has lovely plant pots, baskets, watering cans around. She's got some geese that are outside in her garden. She's got a vegetable patch there, her wheelbarrow, her Wellington boots, and it's just such a lovely place. I don't have a granny who's like that, but I'm sure there's people who do. This is just something fun. Then, you write all of those down and what that can help you with is drawing your ideas from them. You draw your elements, your illustrations from these sub themes you could call them. Also, while you do this, you need to think about who is your target market? So I've aimed for 20 to 40 year olds females because it's going to be very pretty females who are looking for pretty things like notebooks and things like that. Then the colors I've thought about are boho colors, pastel colors. This can change, I might change my mind. This is just an idea. Then again, the theme it's nice to write down the story. Granny's cottage, a collection of designs showing a glimpse of Granny's garden with her geese as she waters the plants, flowers and vegetables, a warm feeling on a late spring day. I'm going to have six patterns and my mini collection. Then my ideal product would be for home accessories like tea towels, I thought of stationery as well. But interchange This is where you're starting. For you, what you need to do is think about what is your theme for your collection, and then break it down into sub themes and ideas and draw illustrations for your collection. You can do it in a sketchbook. You can do it by handing the sketchbook or you can do it digitally, whatever works for you. Now that I've chosen the illustration, I sketch these out and I have scanned them into Affinity Photo. Then I've just arranged them in a way just to show you how I want to do them. The first one, I've got all the geese and all the plan pots, watering can, et cetera. That's going to be my hero, the most detailed one. Then I'm going to move over here on the right, we have hero number two. I'm going to use plank pots, more focused on plan pots. This will be like a hero coordinate you will see how it turns out. Then on the bottom left, you have the blender and I'm going to do a ditzy floral. It's going to be space with dots in the background, and then next door to that. Next door to that, I've got the large florals, can be nice floors there representing her beautiful garden. Then we have the granny square. Which I want to do. I'm going to do that monotone just to break down the collections because I feel like there's going to be quite a lot of colors going on, so I'm going to just break that down and make that monotone, just using two colors. Then lastly, we'll have lines and mini florals. Then I might add a Ginham pattern as well to the end to show you how that. As we move on, I want you to start doing your drawings and write down which design goes with which if you feel like it's going to be hero, blender, secondary coordinate, I use both of those because you'll hear those and you'll know which ones they are. That's your focus to get your drawings out and drawn on computer, hand draw, procreate, whatever you use. And also take note that before you actually start doing your sketches and drawings, make sure you create your own mood board with color palette. This will help you to engage and get your drawings out. Moodboard, color palette, I get all of my ideas from Pinterest. That's the easiest place for me. Type in the color palette you'd like, and then you can start drawing from there. Then once you've done that, we're going to go into the next lesson and start with the hero paten. A 4. Creating a Hero Pattern: You are creating our hero print. Get your sketch, drag it out your scan sketch, and then make sure you create a new layer. You can lock it so that will stop it from moving when you start doing your designs on top of it. Just add a new layer on top. Then you can lower the opacity so that will help you to draw on top of the design and it'll give you a clearer look. Choosing a color palette is really important. I do have a class where I speak about color palettes and how to do them and put them into the system of Affinity, whether it's Affinity Photo or Affinity Designer. Here I am choosing my brush and I like to use a pencil brush just gives that rough edge, and then I start drawing or painting on top of my animal on top of the animal that I've chosen to do. This is really the fun part. As I said, I have another class which talks about color palettes and then also it's really good to have a mood board so you know what motifs you want to work on. And so once you've done that, then that will help you to choose your designs, your sketches, and your motives in a much easier and seamless way. Okay. So now I'm carrying on with my painting on top of my sketching, and I'm looking at the colors together. Again, I'm just using the colors that are specific to the color palette that I've chosen and I'm not straying away from that unless I'm just darkening the tone slightly. And then I'm just repeating some of the elements again. This is a scattered pattern. I do that a lot. If you have a certain way where you like to do patterns, do it that way. Whether that is doing things geometrically, or if you like to do things with a brick pattern, or you can do half drop patterns. So yeah, there are different ways you can do that. But main point is with your hero cutting, you need to have a lot of different details and you're telling the story. So you can see here I'm doing the goose, different it's like the same goose in different positions, doing different things in the garden. I'm just added a few little elements there where I've just sketched some grass just to make it a bit more quirky, a bit more abstract, you could say, whimsical. But it's adding all those details, those little things to make it the hero print, to make it stand out, and you're going to look at that and think, well, that's the one that stands out. That is the main focus when it comes to hero prints. Now, here I am adding a bit of texture because I feel like sometimes it can be quite flat when you I've just added a bit of texture, and I've chosen one of the texture options in the brushes. And then I've just added another layer, and I've changed the opacity to taking that right down, it just adds a bit of texture to the piece. Then I'm going to do the repeat for it. I'll teach this. If you beginning to do repeat patterns, please check out my class about how to do a seamless pattern because there's a technical side to it as well. Just making sure it's on the side there and then I've repeated it onto the other side, and then I continued this as well. This texture is on the back layer just above the color layer. No. So now I'm just going to test the repeats. I've just added a square on the top and I'm using the gradient tool here and then bitmap. But before you do that, you need to make sure that you save it as a JPEG. I go into File export as a JPEG and I export that and I save it as what you want to save it as. And then I can click onto the rectangle, click on Bitmap, and then click onto my JPG and open it, and then you can check on the repeat and slide it down. It looks good. If you're not happy withviRpeat, you can go back and change it. Totally fine. That's what it is. So this is the hero print. I'll see you in the next class where I will talk to you about coordinates. 5. Creating Coordinating Patterns: Coordinates can be complex or more simplified. The main point is to include some detail. You can do large scale geometrics like art deco, wallpaper, large scale florals or simple pattern with a bit of detail. I decided to do a simple coordinate and a complex coordinate just to show you the difference. In Affinity Photo here and I've got my scanned image. Dragging it across and placing the drawings that I want to draw over. This one I think is quite light, so I haven't changed the opacity on this one, so it just depends on what you want to do. I just added that new layer and then I'm choosing my brush. I like to use a pencil one just to have a bit of texture. I zoom in and then I just paint over the top. When I started doing this one, instead of adding all the details, I've just done a rough coloring. This shows me the colors that I'm using. You can see that I'm switching and I'm trying to find out what color background works well with the colors that I've worked with. It's really about testing and going backward and forward and checking what color works together, what stands out better, what will make your work stand out better. You have to take time in doing that. Once I'm happy, I'm just pulling those different colors and adding a little bit of detail, but keeping it rough again and making sure that I'm coloring in different layers, of course. I've just got into Affinity Publisher, as you can see there. I've got a format here where I've just put in my Hero pattern. I'm just looking at this pattern that I'm working on compared to the Hero pattern, if I like the colors, if they work together. That's another thing that is important. You match it up with your previous pattern and once you're happy with that, you then start to build your pattern and add in the details. Now that I've added my details and I've done my pattern, I've done this as a half drop piece and I've added my details. You can see it's a simple pattern, but yet it has detail. It's not completely simple. I've put that as the coordinate part. I'm saving this into my file, so saving it as a JPEG, so I can test my repeat and then also saving it as the Affinity file as well. You've got that you can edit it when you need to. I'm here in Affinity Publisher. This will be given to you at the end of the lesson so you can have this format for yourself. I've just got a square and then I'm just filling it and using the bitmap tool and then putting the pattern in there. I can then see and compare if it works together. I'm just doing this again just making sure because sometimes when you do the square yourself, sometimes it doesn't pick up. I've had to refill Yeah, I'm looking and comparing and I think it looks okay. This would be my simple coordinate. Then I want to go on to my more complex coordinate. I've got this one here again making sure that you're saving your work. Now I'm going to go on to doing the large laurels. I finding my paint color or the brush that I'm using. Again, I'm using pencil because I'm being cohesive with it, keeping to the same brush pens. That's really important when you're doing your patterns. Don't switch between two brushes unless it's in the same piece. And just what I did before, creating a new layer for each segment or each floral and adding in all those details there. Keeping the lines quite clean. I'm making sure I'm using the same palette. This is the complex coordinates so you can see that these large florals are dominating a bit more. It's clearer. I've added more detail, so you can see the adding these kind of line marks. I like to use them. They're little grass. That just adds a bit of detail. It's a bit more bolder, striking. I almost looks like a hero, but it isn't the hero. Then we go into Affinity Publisher. I'm just showing you. I've just taken things out a little bit. I've got the three patterns here. First, we've got the Hero pattern, the geese and then moving on, we've got the two coordinates, complex coordinates in the middle and a simplified coordinate on the right. Thank you for joining me in this class. I see in the next class as we talk about M Lenders. 6. Creating Blender Patterns: I've taken my image from my drawing, little cute flower, and then I've colored it in and then repeated the same one over again. This is a tossed pattern, really simple, just using one is what you can use for a blender pattern. That's what it's about. It's about simplicity. Then I'm just going through the backgrounds, just trying to find one that I like the best, the one that works the best for me. Then I get that repeat and I put it into Affinity Publisher. Then I've put it into the square and I'm checking the repeat straight onto here actually. And matching it with the other designs as well. That one is quite straightforward and I'm going to show you how to do now a gingham pattern, and this is simple too. If you just get a square and drag it into the center it's a rectangle basically. That's half of the square. Then I'm going to choose my color. I've chosen this peach color and making sure everything is snaps to the edges. Then I copy it and I paste it I rotate it and I put it onto the top corner. This is why it's good to have the snapping tool so you can see when it snaps. There you go. It's not snapping, so I'm just playing around with that there. Click on to this rectangle here, which will change the square in different ways you can darken it, multiply it, collarbn. I've clicked on to multiply. You can see now that there is one square that is darker than the other two. This is really good for a Ginham because it's crosshatched pattern. What I do I just go on and save that file and save it as a JPEG and save it as my Affinity file as well. I click on a new layer and I'm just going to test the repeat. You should know the drill for this. I've got my rectangle tool, drag it across. And then I click on Bitmat and then click on Ginham and then drag it to see if it repeats. It's as simple as that. You've got your gingham, and when I find out about this, I was just so excited. Yeah, I put it into your sell sheet. And it looks like it's matching, and you can see here at the top and right, I have added another pattern there. I was in between it being a blender or a coordinate, but to me, it looks like a coordinate because it's quite busy. But always feel free to experiment with different designs. Thank you for joining me in this class, and I'm going to show you how to do a portfolio sheet or a sell sheet so you can present it either on your website or present it to your potential customers or claier. 7. Creating a Sell Sheet to Get Your Work Noticed: We are here in Affinity Designer and just putting in some of the patterns and finishing just adding the patterns that I've completed and then filling them into the different boxes or rectangles. I've got six patterns here, my blenders, my coordinates, and my hero prints. Then I can use these and make them into a mockup. I usually get my mockups from Creates. This one was the one that I got it from. You got to think about who your target market is and then you can make your own mockup sheets. I have a class on that on my Skillshare. Please check it out if you want to know how to do mockups using retss and other documents that aren't part of the Affinity software. I've got my mockup and I've saved it as a JPG and then I'm going to place that onto the next square. Then you add the JPEG of the mockup into the page. Making sure that snapping tool is on. If you want to add pages, you click on the page and it says add pages, and then you can overwrite the number of pages, whether it's before or after the cover page that you're on. Because this is going to be the front page, I put it before. I'm just adding a text box and I'm just explaining what you need to write. You put your name or your company name at the top. This is your front page sheet. I'm just changing the front here and I'm just writing designs for. Who are you specifically designing for? Then you write the company that you're designing for. I usually put their logo on there. Your company logo, and then it says designs for, and then the company logo that you're designing for the company, obviously. And I exported this exporting it as a PDF, all pages. I will put the collection name and I save that. This is just going to see how this looks as a PDF. You have your name, designs for company logo, look, you can see that there is a mistake there. What has happened is all of these images here need to be rasterized, or else it'll just do it as the square that you have as you repeat. Rasterize each of these squares and it basically flattens the image onto the page. I'm going to check it all pages. I like to do all pages because they come out instead of side by side, it goes straight down. You got that and then you can see now everything's flattened as it should be, and then you can put your logo on there. You've got your mockup there. This can continue as a portfolio. This is just a starting, just a glimpse of how it should look like. You can give that sell sheet to your clids. You can put it on your website, you can save it as a JPEG, whatever you want, but there it is for you to explore and experiment and enjoy. So thank you for joining me in this class. I hope you've enjoyed it. Now we have come to the end of all the classes. I'm going to talk to you and just give you a little bit of heads up on the end notes. But I hope you've enjoyed this class, and I'll see you soon. 8. Outro: Thank you for joining me in this class. I hope you've gained some knowledge in how to create cohesive pattern collections, please share your work. I really want to see your work and how you've developed and how you've understood it. If you have any questions that you want to add or want to ask me, please feel free to share it in the discussions. I would love to reply and help you in that because what it's all about is understanding each other. How to grow and how to be better designer. I have also added a template for you to fill in when you put your patterns in so you can mix and match each design and to see if they work together as a cohesive pattern, and then you can put your logo at the end or your name at the end, if you want to put that onto your portfolio website, or if you want to use it as a sell sheet to send to potential clients. Thank you again for coming. I am so excited to see what you've done, and I will see you soon. Take care. Enjoy designing.