Transcripts
1. About This Class : Hi, I'm Kris Ruff and
I'm a surface designer. That means I make art work mostly repeat patterns that I licensed to manufacturers
to put on their products. I've actually made hundreds of patterns and worked
with dozens of manufacturers since
I transitioned from graphic design into surface
design about a decade ago. And now I'm here to
share everything I know about making repeat
patterns with you. In this class, you're
going to learn how to make repeat patterns in
Adobe Illustrator. And there are some other
classes that do that too. But in this one, rather than
seeing just a simple demo, you're going to learn
the entire concept and how to work with
repeat patterns. That way you'll have a
better understanding of the topic and also broader range of skills that you can
use in your art right away. You'll learn how to make repeat patterns using
the traditional methods, as well as how to use
illustrators pattern tool. You'll learn about
different types of repeats like brick repeats,
half-drop repeats, as well as how to add
backgrounds to your patterns and how to edit both simple
and complex patterns. I'll also show you how I set up my files when I send
them to clients, a foolproof method to export
your files when you're sending them to Spoonflower or other print-on-demand sites. Now, we're gonna be covering
a lot of information, but I've broken the
class down into bite-size lessons so that later, if you do get stuck
or have a question, you can easily go back
and refer to the lessons. And although this isn't exactly an Illustrator 101 class, if you've used Illustrator, at all, you should be just fine. I always try to keep things as simple and easy as possible. A couple of technical details: I work on a Mac, so any
keyboard shortcuts I use maybe a little bit
different if you're on a PC. I'm using Adobe
Illustrator 2021, but all of the tools
I'm using should be in earlier versions as well. So I think that covers it. Let's go make some patterns.
2. The Basic Concept: I want to start with this
humble little ceramic tile because it does a good job illustrating how
digital patterns work. We can take this little tile, it has just some
simple shapes on it. But when we repeat them, we get a whole different look. Suddenly we have blue circles
with stylized flowers in them and this beautiful rhythm
that forms in the pattern. And that's really the magic
of making repeat patterns. In Illustrator we also start with a tile, then we turn it into a swatch that can be used
to fill a shape. Illustrator fills that shape by repeating the tiles
end and top to bottom, just like you would
with ceramic tiles, until you fill that shape. Now let's look at one of the
individual pattern tiles in Illustrator. Every tile needs to
have a bounding box, and that's really just the edge or the boundary of the tile. The bounding box needs to be
invisible, so it can't have any fill to it and it
can't have any stroke. It needs to be placed at the back of all the
other elements. So when you make a tile
and make the bounding box, you need to make sure
that you send it to the back of all of
the other elements. But beyond that, a tile can be any shape or size you want and it doesn't
have to be square. Now keep in mind, if
you add elements to your tile that cross
over that bounding box, they'll get cut off because they're sort of out-of-bounds. That's what's happening here. So the way we get around that is whatever it's going to be
cut off by the bounding box. We just put that on the
other side of the tile. So when we put the
tiles together, those elements that crossover the bounding box line will then match up perfectly and will
give us our seamless shapes. Let me show you one more
example with these florals. You can see on the
left that a lot of the flowers crossed
that bounding box line. So they are in effect
out of bounds. So all we do is duplicate them and put them on the
other side of the tile. Illustrator will cut off that tile at the
bounding box edge. So it looks like this. And then when we fill
this shape with it, they all get put back
together and look like a complete seamless
repeat pattern. So now let's go into Illustrator and walk through
that process again.
3. Make Your First Pattern: Let's take what we did
in the last lesson and actually do it in Illustrator. So what I've got
here is I've got some random shapes that I'm
going to use in my pattern. First I'm gonna make
a bounding box. So I take my rectangle tool and I could just draw
a rectangle like that. But I want it to be
nice even numbers. So I'm going to use the
option key and click and I'm gonna make it five
inches by six inches. Now I'll just fill it
with these random shapes. Now I'm going to
stop here and you'll notice that I started
filling up the center then I made some that
crossed over the top line of the bounding box and
also the left side. I purposely did that and left the bottom edge and
the right edge blank. And you'll see why in a minute. Remember anything that
hangs off the edge, we need to duplicate
or create a clone on the other side. We pick one of them
and we're gonna go to object transform- move then this
dialogue box pops up. And remember, our bounding box is five inches by six inches. So we want to move our shape
five inches horizontally, but 0 inches vertically. Then rather than click
Okay, click, Copy. And there it is. We'll do that same
thing with this one. And I'll Shift and
click that one too. And this one's really close, so we'll shift and
click that one too. We can move those all
at the same time, in exactly the same way. Five inches to the right. copy. Then we'll do the same
thing top and bottom. So this one and this
one cross the edge. So we'll go to object
transform move. And this time we
don't want to move it horizontally, so that's 0. We want it to move it six
inches vertically and copy. Now we can continue to
fill in the rest of it. Now this one I'm putting
over the line again, so I need to move that
one down here too. So again, object -transform- move and move it 0 horizontal, and 6 vertically and copy. And then I'll just
fill in some more. Okay. I think that's pretty good. Actually, we've got a little
bit of a hole up here. Let's make this one
and make it smaller. And tuck that in there. Now that one crosses
the line too. So let's move that
one, transform-move. And this one we want
to move to the left. So that's actually a
minus 5 vertical. I don't like the way these two are bumping into each other. So I'm just going to move
this, this one right here. Okay, so that's the
start of our pattern. Now remember before we can
make this into a pattern, we need to make our
bounding box invisible. So let's click on it and
go over and make sure the fill is none and
the stroke is none. And now we're ready. We select the whole thing, drag it to the swatches panel. It pops up right here. If you don't see the
swatches panel over here, you can go to Window
and swatches, which is right down here. Okay, Let's zoom out
and fill a shape. And click on Fill and the swatch that has
our pattern in it. And there's our pattern. So that's the first method for making a pattern in Illustrator. I'll be referring to that
as the manual method, just because you have to do a little bit and it's
a little bit more hands-on so you have to make
the duplicates yourself. In the next lesson,
I'll introduce you to the pattern tool that takes care of some of
that stuff for you.
4. Introduction to the Pattern Tool: In this lesson, I'm
going to show you an even easier way
to make patterns, and that is illustrators
pattern tool. It's super intuitive. You don't have to worry about
bounding boxes are clones. You just need to
bring your elements into the tool and you can
work with them there. So let me show you how it works. I'm going to start with
those random shapes again, and you'll notice
they're arranged in exactly the same way as
the previous example, but there's no bounding
boxes and there's no clones. It's just those motifs. So to make our pattern
using the pattern tool, all we do is select our items, go to Object, Pattern, Make. Now a new window opens
up and we'll get, you might get this message
that just says, Hey, this new pattern is going to be added to your swatches panel. Just dismiss that. And there's our pattern. We didn't have to
make any clones. We didn't have to do
the bounding box. Now, it looks a little different
than the previous one. There's a lot of gaps
between our tile. And the reason for that is, even though we didn't have
to make a bounding box, every pattern does have
to have a bounding box. So illustrator makes
one automatically. And you'll see it's
exactly the size of all of our elements. They fit exactly inside
this particular rectangle. We can change the
size and shape of that bounding box by
clicking up here. Once we do that,
we get handles on the bounding box and we can just move them
however we want. And when I lift up immediately, you see the changes
in the pattern. We can also change
them over here. So if you want to have an even number like
we did last time, you can just simply
type it in here, five by six, that
adjusted the pattern. And now this pattern looks
exactly like the previous one, but we didn't have to
make a bounding box and we didn't have to
do the duplicates. What we're seeing right now is three tiles across
and three tiles down. And that's what this means here. So we can change
it and see how it looks in a bigger area. And that's a really cool
feature because you can immediately see if there's any
problems with the pattern. If I zoom back in, we can do anything we want with those elements so I can
pick one and I can move it. And you see that every
iteration of it moves too. So it's a, this is a
super powerful tool. We can even change the color of them or whatever we wanna do. Now it can get confusing when you're editing
your pattern. And let's say you want to
change the color of this one. Well, if I click right here, nothing happens, I
can't move that. That's because it's not actually
inside the bounding box. So if you want to make things a little bit
easier to look at, you can dim those
copies right over here. And you can change how
much dimming you want. That way you can still
see the pattern, but you know which
motifs are active. So this we know is not active. But over here, I
can move this one. Once you're happy
with your pattern, you just click done and you'll find it has
popped up right there. So we can fill this shape
with the new pattern, and it looks like that. So that's how you use
the pattern tool. Next up, I'm going to show
you some different types of patterns that are super easy to make with
the pattern tool.
5. Pattern Repeat Types: There are several
different types of repeats that are used
in surface design. Everything that
we've worked with so far has been a straight repeat. And that's where
the tiles line up perfectly both horizontally
and vertically. There's another type and
that's called a brick repeat. In that situation each row is offset half a
tile from the previous row. Think of it just
like a brick wall. The third type is called
a half drop repeat, and it's probably the most commonly used one
in surface design. And in that case,
alternating columns are dropped half a tile length. So why would you want to use these different
types of repeats? Well, the straight repeat
can look formal and orderly, and sometimes that's good. But oftentimes it looks static
and maybe a little dull. By contrast, patterns
built with a brick or half-drop repeat tend to be a little bit
more interesting. The way the tiles alternate
kind of helps the eye move through the
pattern so they just has more energy
and more movement. The easiest way to make
these different types of repeats is using
Illustrator Pattern tool. You can do them manually, but it's quite a lot of work
and some math involved, so it's a lot easier to
use the pattern tool. Illustrator uses some slightly different names
for these repeats. A straight repeat is
referred to as grid, and the brick repeat is
referred to as Brick by Row and half-drop
as brick by column. So in the next lesson, I'll show you a demo so you
can see how to make these different kinds of repeats and how they affect our pattern.
6. Creating Different Pattern Types: This little plant design will
work well to illustrate how the different repeat types will affect your pattern design. So we'll use the pattern
tool and simply select it, go into Object, Pattern, Make. And our little plant is put into a bounding box that just
fits the edges of it. Let me zoom out and
with the pattern tool, Let's give it a little
bit of breathing room. I'm going to just change the
size of the bounding box. So here's where we
determine the pattern type. There's the grid, there's
Brick by Row, Brick by Column. And then these two hex options. And I'm not gonna go into that, That's rarely used
in surface design. You can play with
it if you want. But, but these three are that really the ones that you're
going to want to use? So currently it's on grid. Let's look at brick by row. On the edge here you can see how each row is offset
from the previous one. Now let's do brick by column. And now the columns
are straight, but each one is offset
from the previous one. Let me change the
color of one of these so we can really
see what's happening. With the brick by column. We have vertical
lines are intact. The horizontal lines
bump up and down. And often there'll
be a strong diagonal that will turn up
in your pattern. And we'll go back
to brick by row. And now the horizontal
lines are very prominent. But vertically, the design
pops back and forth. And again, compare
that to the grid where the blue dots horizontally are aligned and also
vertically aligned. And there's nothing
wrong with a grid repeat, I'm gonna give it a little bit of more
breathing room. Something like this could
be a cute wallpaper. So the biggest thing
here is to then just play around with
the bounding box and see what changes it makes if I bring it in tight and we
kinda get some overlap. So they nest within one
another and that's kinda nice. One other thing to note is, right now the offset is a half. We've got lots of other
choices to, like say we don't want these
two little berries to bump into each other. We could try making it a
third, and now they don't. Or we could make it two thirds. And you can just see
how each change, changes the rhythm
of the design. Let me show you one more
just quick example with these fruit will
make our pattern. Here's what it looks
like as a grid. And as Brick by Row
and brick by column. If we focus in on
the pairs here, the pairs are perfectly
aligned up and down. But horizontally, they
move back and forth. With the brick by row. The pairs are aligned
horizontally, but vertically. The pairs move back and forth. And the nice thing
about the pattern tool is you can obviously
make changes here. Like if you don't like
this strong diagonal, you could change it a little
bit and make it go this way, or change how much space
is in between them. And I didn't mention
this before, but you can certainly
make changes, You can draw it right
in the pattern tool. So if you decided to put some dots in
the background here, this makes it really easy. And there's our final result. Okay, now in the next lesson, I'm going to show you how
to edit patterns made both in the manual method and
with the pattern tool.
7. Editing Simple Patterns: You might be wondering why
I bothered to teach you the manual method
for making patterns when the pattern tool
is just so much easier? Well first I think
it's always good to just understand the
mechanics of making patterns because at
some point you're probably going to have a pattern that isn't working properly. And the more you understand
about how it works, the easier it will be to
diagnose and fix the problem. Secondly, there are some
limitations to the pattern tool. One of them is that you can't really add a
background color. The pattern tool that you have to do in
the manual method. And also, if you have a
really complicated pattern, sometimes it will really make
your computer bogged down. In that case, you might want to use the manual method as well. So now let's look at how to edit simple patterns in both methods. And we'll start with
the pattern tool. For this example. We're going to start
with these same shapes. And to make a
pattern out of them, we select them and go
into Object Pattern Make, let's say right off the bat, we want to make some changes. We want to make, we want to make this orange and this one pink. Are happy with that. So we click done. Then we can make a shape and fill it
with our new pattern. Now maybe you're still
not happy with it. So how do you go back and
re-edit this pattern? Well, you use the
secret door and that's double-clicking swatch
in the palette. That brings you right back
into the pattern tool. And now you can make
whatever changes you want. Maybe change this one to
lavender and then click Done. So the changes we made in the pattern tool are
automatically updated. Okay, what if I want a second
version of this pattern? Like maybe I want it
all to be one color. Again, I double-click
on the swatch and I just need to
select everything. And let's make it all orange. Now, if I click done, just like last time, it will change the swatch
that's already there. We want to save a copy of it so that we have both
of these versions. So instead of clicking done, we click, Save a Copy. It tells us what it's going
to call the new pattern. Click, Okay? And now you see
the pattern there. Okay, so it seems like
everything's good. So you click Done. And now
look up here, what's happened. We've lost that previous version and we have two versions
of the new one. That's not what we wanted. So I'm just going to do an undo. We go back in here and look back over to
the swatches panel. We do not yet have
that second version. So we'll save a copy. Click. Okay, we see it here. And I know this doesn't
seem intuitive, but rather than say done here, we need to say Cancel. Now we have both our versions so we can change back
and forth between them. Now let's do this one
with the manual method. We just need to add
a bounding box. Make sure that the fill is unknown and the
stroke is on none. Then we need to
make sure it's at the back of all of the motifs. So we go to Object, Arrange, Send to Back. And now we just select everything and bring it
to our Swatches palette. Then we can make a shape, click on Fill, and fill
it with the pattern. So how do I make
changes on this one? Well, I can just
make them directly in the swatch over here. So let me change
some of the colors, will make these blue, and then select it again and
drag it over here again. Now, I can fill this rectangle with the new revised pattern. Now there is a second option, and that is even though
we created this as a manual pattern and put it
into the Swatches panel. We can edit it the same way we did the
pattern tool version. So I double-click on the swatch and it brings
me into the pattern tool. And now we can change things
just the way we did before. If we're just editing, then we click Done. If we want to save
this as a new version, we save a copy. Click Okay, the new copies
there, and we hit cancel. And now there's our new version. Now this was a very
simple design. There was no clones, there was nothing
hanging over the edges. In the next lesson,
I'm going to show you a little bit more
complex example of this.
8. Editing Complex Patterns: In this lesson, I've got some important tips about
editing more complex patterns. And by that, I mean
any pattern that has motifs crossing the bounding
box like this one does. The first tip is when you're
editing manual repeats. Don't forget the clones. For example, if you want
to move this shape, you must Shift-click the
other one on the other side. So that when you move them, they stay in perfect alignment. When you make the repeat. If your element is on the
corner, in other words, it crosses both the
bottom and the side. You'll need to choose all four clones and
move them together. If you don't, you'll get
something that looks like this. You can see here that I moved one clone but not the other. The same holds true if you
want to change the colors. If I want to change
the color of that, I need to change
it on both sides. And same with this one. If you don't, you'll
get a pattern that looks something like this. Now this situation
happens a lot, especially if you're going
to re-color something and provide a second
colorway to your client. It's super important
that you look carefully because this
one was easy to see. But look it up here. Sometimes there's just a little
tiny piece that crosses. So it's easy to make this error. Now if you want to change
the size of one of the elements that crosses
the line, like this one. You've gotta do something a
little differently because you can't size them together. Obviously their
position changes. If you want to change the size, you just do that on one of them. You'll have to delete the
other clone and redo it. Now these tips only pertain
to manually made patterns. You don't have to worry about this stuff when you
use the pattern tool, which is one of the
reasons I really like it. The second tip that I
have for you is watch out for duplicate motifs
in the pattern tool. If you bring a pattern into the pattern tool
that has clones, you'll end up with motifs
layered on top of each other, which gets super confusing
when you're trying to edit. Let me show you what I mean. I'm going to make our
bounding box invisible. Then bring this into the pattern
tool by object. Pattern. Make. Everything looks just fine. But if you click on one of those motifs that
crosses the line, you'll discover that
there's two of them. There's two of that one. And this one, any of them
that crossed the line. So before you bring a pattern
into the pattern tool, make sure it doesn't
have clones. So I would just select
anything that's on one side and everything
that's crosses on the bottom. And now it's safe to bring
this into the pattern tool. And we don't have
overlapping shapes. I'm going to put
this manual pattern into the swatches panel. Remember in the last lesson I said that once it's in here, even though we made it manually, we can edit it in
the pattern tool, which is really nice. But that one didn't have anything that crossed
the bounding box. In this case it does. So I want to show you
what happens when we have clones in a swatch. So I double-click it and we
get this message right here. It's got some
complicated instructions about clipping masks
and legacy formats. But basically what
this is saying is, Hey, you've got a swatch
that has clones in it. So say Okay, go into
the preview command Y, and then you'll need to use the group selection tool first and the order
is important here. First, click on the
bounding box and delete it. And now, just like
we did before, get rid of the clones on
one side and on the bottom. And now you can move everything. You can edit this
however you want. So now you know how to
edit your patterns. And next I'll show you how
to add background colors.
9. Adding Background Colors: So let's talk about
adding backgrounds. And first I want to show
you in the manual method, we'll use these same motifs. And if I go into
Command Y preview, you can see it already
has a bounding box. So to make a background, I just need to make a
rectangle that's bigger than the bounding box and then fill it with whatever color
I want as the background. Now obviously that needs
to go behind the elements. So we go to object, arrange, send to back. But remember our bounding
box needs to be at the back. So go into Command Y, preview. Click on that bounding
box and say object, arrange, send to back. Then as before, we select everything and drag
it into the swatches. Now we'll fill a shape with our new pattern to
check it, and there it is. So now let's see how we do
that in the pattern tool. We'll go into a
different pattern. We'll use this one, double-click
and do the same thing. We'll go to our rectangle
tool and then just make a box it's bigger
than the bounding box. Go to object, arrange,
send to back. And there it is, except
you see the problem. If we look closely, our motifs are getting cut off. So that's, that's the issue. What are our options then? Well, as before I said that
you're going to want to sometimes go back
and forth between the pattern tool
and manual method. And this is one of those times. So basically to make it
a manual pattern, again, all we need to do is drag that swatch out of
the swatches panel. And if we look at the preview, we can see it's got
the bounding box and all the elements. The only difference is when
you drag out a swatch, illustrator automatically
groups those things. So the first thing we wanna do is right-click and ungroup. Now each element is separate and the bounding
box is separate, and that's the key,
that's what we want. So Command Y. And now we can do
exactly the same thing. We make a rectangle that's
bigger than the bounding box. Fill it with our
background color, send it to the back. And then go into preview. Find that bounding box
and send it to the back. Now exactly as we did before, select everything, drag
it to the swatches, it shows up here. And then we can fill it here. So that's really the easiest
way to add a background to a pattern that you've
made using the pattern tool. By dragging it out of
the swatches panel, you're converting it
back into manual one. And as long as you
ungroup it first, you can then add the
background just as if it was a manual created pattern.
10. Working with Shapes Filled with Patterns: In this lesson, I want
to give you some info about working with shapes
filled with patterns. So let's make our shape and
fill it with a pattern. The first thing I
want to talk about is sometimes a little hairline
will show up in your pattern. This little tiny black
line right down here. That can mean that there's something wrong
with your pattern. That for some reason the
pattern tiles aren't budding up perfectly
next to each other. Or it could also be something
called an artifact. And that's basically
a flaw in how the computer screen is
rendering your pattern tiles. If that's the case, then
there's nothing to worry about. So how can you tell
one way or the other? You can try scaling
the box up and down. I'm going to hold the
Shift Option keys and then just pull
on this corner. And as I do that, you can see that that little hairline kind of
pops in and out. Sometimes it's there,
sometimes not. That means it's an artifact. The same is true if you
just zoom in on that spot. Sometimes it will be
there and sometimes not. Now, if I was zooming in
every single time I zoomed, that line was still there. Then that signals there's
something wrong with your pattern and you need to
go back and troubleshoot. Now let's talk about re-sizing the pattern within this shape. As I showed you already, if you just size the box, the pattern will size with it. So the way to change
the pattern itself is use the scale tool option, click in the rectangle. And now we've got
some options here. First off, you can see the
size of our box changed here. And that's because we
have this one checked. So if we uncheck
Transform Objects, now, only the pattern is transformed, only the pattern
is made smaller. Now something super cool and maybe you already
know this trick. If you just put your
cursor in here, click the up arrow, and each time you do that, it gets bigger by 1%. And obviously if you
use the down arrow, it goes the other way. The same is true. If you just scroll, as long as I click in this box, I can just scroll on my mouse and it will
do the same thing. It'll just move up and down until I get it to
the size I want. So that's super handy. Now if you wanted to change
the shape of this box, if I just pull on the side, it's going to
distort the pattern. So you can use your
direct selection tool. With this, I can choose
just a part of the box. So what I wanna do is
click right on that edge. And as long as these
little handles on the corner are outlined
and not solid, that I can move just one edge. So I'm going to click
on that edge and pull. And now I can make that shape as long or as small as I want. If I want it to
remain a rectangle, I can just use the
Shift key and that'll constrain it to only
move left and right. And obviously I can do
that on this side as well. Another thing we can do is move the pattern
within the shape. And that's helpful
if you want to say center your motifs
within your shape. So I'll take our selection
tool, select the rectangle, and go into Object,
Transform, Move. And now we make sure
that this is unchecked. And then we can do
the same thing here. If you have arrow
keys, you can use them and watch as the pattern moves. And obviously, we can
move it back and forth and we can move it up and down. So now, you know how to
work with filled shapes. You know how to
make patterns with the manual method and
with the pattern tool. So all we have left is to
talk about how to save your patterns or export them depending on what
your client needs.
11. Saving Illustrator Files: There's no one correct way to set up your Illustrator
files for patterns. Obviously, if you're just using them for your own purposes, you can set them up
however you want. When I'm sending
patterns to a client, I always ask them first, can they take an
Illustrator file or do they need
some other format? If they can take an
Illustrator file, I try to make it as easy as possible for them to understand the file because I
don't know if you've ever worked on somebody
else's Illustrator file, but sometimes it feels like cooking in someone
else's kitchen. Everything, it just
not quite sure where everything is
or how it's set up. So I try to make it as
easy as possible for them. So let me show you what
I do. On the right I'll make a shape and
fill it with my pattern. And then on the other side, I'll actually take that swatch, drag it out of the
swatches panel. Then I'll de-select
and go into preview. And then using the
Group Selection Tool, I'll click on my bounding box. And I'm going to
give that a stroke, a bright color that's
not in the artwork. So I'm going to, in this case, I'm going to use
this bright pink. The purpose of that
is just so they can see where the
bounding box line is. And then I just add
some explanation so that they know that this is the repeat pattern tile and this other shape is a sample shape filled
with the pattern. I'll add the name
of the pattern and if you have an
identification number, this is a good place to put it. I'll add swatches that show the different colors
that are in the pattern. In this case, there's
just the green. And then finally,
I'll add in my logo and copyright and
my website address. If you've done other
versions of this pattern, make sure that you
get rid of those before you send it
to the client so there's no way that
they can possibly use the wrong swatch to
make their products. Click on these three little
lines up here and go down to where it says
Select All Unused. When you click that, it'll
highlight everything that is not used
in your document. And then click the little
trash can. Click. Yes. And now the only pattern swatch that's there is the
actual one we've used. And you can check that by
clicking on your shape, click on the fill and you'll see that that one is outlined. So that way you know that
they have exactly what they need and that lessens the
opportunity for mistakes. And then I'll just save that as an Illustrator file and that's what I will send to the client.
12. Exporting Raster Files: Next, let's talk about
how to export a file to a different format other
than an Illustrator file. First, we're going
to very briefly go over a couple of
terms you'll run into. The first one is file type Jpeg and PNG are the most common
ones for this purpose. And both are raster files compared to an illustrator file, which is a vector file. Next we'll talk about
color modes when you're working in digital files where the color is
created by light, like the light coming
through your computer. You're looking at RGB colors, that stands for red,
green, and blue. And when you combine those
colors in various ways, you actually get a
full rainbow of color. Now, in printing,
oftentimes the colors that are used are CMYK colors. And that stands for Cyan, magenta, yellow and black. In a similar way, by mixing
those inks together, you'll also get a rainbow. Although not quite
as vibrant and varied as in the
RGB color range. You might also come across
the term pantone colors. Pantone is a brand name for a
whole system of ink colors. And they're developed
for printing on paper as well as fashion
and home products. They tend to be a
bigger range of colors than you can get
with the CMYK colors. Lastly is the term resolution, which you probably already know, but it describes the level of detail and quality
of a digital image. And it's measured as dots
per inch or pixels per inch. And sometimes those are
used interchangeably, although really when you're
printing it's dots per inch, and when you're talking
about on the screen, it's pixels per inch. A high resolution image
is considered something higher than 300 DPI
or dots per inch. That's necessary when
you're printing on paper and sometimes
other surfaces. Now for demonstration purposes, I'm going to pretend
that we're setting up a file to send
to Spoonflower, the digital fabric
printing company. We'll need to find
out what their specs are and we'll find
that on their website. If we go under design and sell, and go down to designing FAQ's, we go down to this link
for uploading images. A little ways down, you'll find this paragraph which
outlines all of their specs. Here, they're telling
us they want RGB color. Now they say RGB, that's a slightly
different version, and I'll get to
that in a minute. They do not want CMYK or PMS. Pms is another way
of saying Pantone. They want a Jpeg or a PNG
file as their file type, and then they like 150 DPI. Those are the specs
that we're going to use as we export our file. Exporting to Jpegs can
sometimes be tricky. You can do everything right. And somehow you'll still get a hair line that will show up
between your pattern tiles, like what happened a
couple lessons ago. Now you can't
really see it here. And it is subtle.
But let me zoom in. Hopefully you can see
this little line, this little white line
that runs along here. Now that probably will show up when you're
outputting your design. You want to really check and make sure that that
doesn't happen. I'm going to show you a method
for exporting your J Peg that so far knock on wood
has never failed me. Hopefully it'll
work for you too. Luckily, the process
is pretty darn simple. Go to your Swatch panel, drag out your Swatch
onto your artboard, and then go and select
the bounding box. Now all I need to do
is make sure that my artboard is exactly the same size
as that bounding box. Right now, this is how
big my artboard is. I have no idea what size it is, but I want it to be exactly
the size of my bounding box. To do that, I just go up to object artboards fit
to selected art. Remember the art that I selected was the bounding
box? Click that. Now the key here is to
have these elements, these clones, fall off the edge, never take those away. Having them fall over the
edge like that is what's going to keep you from having
any hairline troubles. One more thing, and this
is super important. If your pattern has
a background color, make sure that it's bigger
than your artboard so that it extends off the edges
just like the other motifs. Now all we do is go to file export as now we'll start adding in the specs that we got from the spoonflower website. I'm just going to leave
the name as a Canthus. They wanted either
a Jpeg or a PNG. I'm always more comfortable with a J Peg. That's what
I'm going to do. The most important thing is to make sure you click
use Artboards. That's how we're sure that's
going to be cut off exactly at our bounding box click port. And then here's where we
finish filling in the specs. Spoonflower wanted it to be RGB. We can leave the file
size at maximum, don't worry about the baseline, you can just leave
that at the default. Spoonflower wanted 150 DPI. Then lastly this anti aliasing, put that on art optimized. Then down here it says
embed ICC profile. And then that little
RGB, I just click that. Now we'll open this file in Photoshop just to double
check for hairlines. This is the exported
pattern tile that I showed you that had a problem
with a hairline in it. I've opened it in Photoshop, but you can also do the same
thing in Adobe Preview. If you don't have Photoshop, it looks fine right
at this scale. But what we really want
to do is just zoom in and look at the
edges of the tile. I've zoomed all the
way in until I can actually see individual pixels. Now I'm just going to go over to the left edge of the tile. And what I'm looking for
is this last row of tiles. And making sure that
they are exactly the same color as
the next row over. Now along here as I scroll, it looks just fine. Now if we look on
that bottom edge, because remember
the hair line was running horizontally
through this. Let's scroll all the way
down and see the difference. Here's what we're looking for. We've got this full green
color on the second row in, but the first row
is a lighter color, and that's where that
hairline comes from. If we scroll along, you'll see that that happens
all along this edge. If we look at the top edge, this one's fine too. You really need to check
all the way around your tile to make sure that
there isn't a problem. Now let's check the
actual tile that we just exploited in our
spoonflower example. If I zoom in along
the vertical edge, all of those look just fine
along the bottom edge. Everything looks good
there on the right edge, everything's fine
also on the top edge. Once we've gone
all the way around the tile and looked
at those edges, if everything looks good, we can really be assured
that there's not going to be any hairlines when
we output our file.
13. Your Project and What's Next: Well, here we are at
the end of the class. Well done for getting
all the way through it. Now, I know I covered a lot
of information in this class, but I purposefully laid it out into little
bite size lessons. So if there's a step you forget or you're
having troubles, you can easily come
back to the class and find the specific
information you need. Your project is to create
three different patterns. First, one that's made
with the manual method, the second using
the pattern tool, and a third that has
a color background. If you can do all
three of those things, first of all, you rock, and second, you are
well on your way to becoming an expert
pattern maker. I also want to mention a great companion
class to this one. It's called diagnosing and
fixing repeat patterns, because in all honesty, it's not going to go
right every single time. But this class
gives you tools to easily figure out what is
wrong with your pattern, why it's not working so
that you can quickly fix it and get back on your way to creating
more patterns. So I hope you'll check
that out. Oh, and don't forget to post your
pattern on the class page. And I would also so appreciate if you could just write a
quick review for the class. That really helps me know
what's resonating with people and helps me plan
and create future classes. You can do that also
on the class page, and it really only
takes a second. And one final thing, don't
forget to follow me here on skill share so you'll know about new classes that are coming up. Or you can also get
on my emailing list, and you can do that
at risbruf.com. So in the meantime, have
fun designing patterns.
14. One More Thing...: Hello. Hi again. I'm popping back in to
let you know that I'm now available for one on
one coaching sessions. So if you like this class and would like to work
with me individually, you can now do so by
booking a session right from my skill
share profile page. I offer two kinds of sessions. The first one is a 1
hour portfolio review where we'll look at
your surface designs. I'll let you know some strengths
and areas to focus on, and you'll get the opportunity
to ask any questions you'd like about art licensing or
the surface design industry. Now I know it can
feel intimidating to show your work to somebody, but it's so smart to get
professional feedback. All the artists that I've
worked with have felt energized and ready to move
forward after our sessions. I also offer a 30 minute Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop
instruction session. If you're struggling
with any aspect of the software, I can help. We can walk through tools, I can demonstrate techniques and workflows that are going
to help solve your issues. So whether you're looking
for a one time session or an ongoing opportunity
for feedback on your work, coaching is such a great
investment in your career, unlike some of the expensive online courses that
are available, coaching doesn't have
a fixed curriculum, so I can give you
exactly the information and guidance that you need
exactly when you need it. I hope you consider coaching. I would love to work with
you and I can't wait to meet you and support you and guide you on your creative journey. You can learn more about
my coaching sessions at chrisrug.com slash CoachE.
Kris Ruff, Surface Pattern Designer & Coach
