Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hello and a very warm welcome back for another
Canvas tutorial. My name is Michelle Marks and I'm a digital product coach. And in this video, I want to dedicate
some time to teach you how to create seamless patterns, repeating patterns
inside of Canva. This is gonna be an
awesome tutorial for the aspiring
pattern designers. There's a few
different reasons why you might want to
create a pattern. First of all, a pattern might
be something that you would like as part of your branding,
your business branding. Perhaps you are creating
notebook covers or plan, designs, that sort of thing where you need a
repeating pattern. Or maybe you delving into the
world of print on-demand, where you want to create
seamless repeating patterns to print on t-shirts and
leggings and mathematics. Anyway, this is the tutorial for you because
I'm going to teach you how you can
create a seamless, never-ending pattern
inside of Canva.
2. Pattern Technique #1: So first I'm going to
show you this technique using very simple
shapes like circles, just to really break down these techniques so that
you really understand it. And then I'm going
to show you how the technique is used in
a more complex pattern. We inside of Canva now and if you're doing this
tutorial with me, first thing we're
going to do is we're going to create a design. And I want you to
create a square design. So I'm going to do 1,000
pixels by 1,000 pixels. We're going to
create a new design. It's very important that
this design B squared for this tutorial because it's
may not work quite so well if you've got a
rectangle art board, okay, so the first thing we
want to do is we want to draw our primary shape to
practice these practices, I'm going to use circles. However, you can use
whatever shape you want. Okay? So we're starting
with a circle. Now. With a circle, it would be very easy for me to just place
a circle in the middle, export that, and that's going
to be a seamless pattern. Of course. However, this is not
going to apply once you start doing more
complex designs. So what I want to do is show you this process and
I'm going to show you two techniques that
he's going to create a seamless pattern type circle. What we wanna do
is, if you notice, when I pass it through
the center of the design, you can see that
purple line appears. Likewise. When I pass it through
the center horizontally, you can see now
I've got crossbars. So what that's indicating is
that the center of my shape, snapping to the
center of the design. Likewise, the size, it's snapping to the
central for design. Now this is really
important with creating your seamless patterns. What I'm going to
show you is when I bring it across to
the left-hand side, I want you to take note of
what happens when a snippet, when it reaches the
middle of the design. Can you see along the left-hand
side of the art board, you can see the
purple line has a P. Can you say that? That is a
very, very important feature. But we're going to make use
of when doing this design. What I'm gonna do is
I'm going to take this circle and I'm
going to snap it to halfway in my design and
halfway in the center of the, in the middle of the artboard. So you can see now it is. It has cut my shape directly in the middle and it's
placed it in the center. I'm going to leave it there. What I'm gonna do is I'm
going to duplicate this. And I'm going to do the same
thing on the other side. So I'm snapping it to the
center of the middle. Now what I'm gonna do is I'm
going to duplicate it again. I'm going to make
my circle smaller. I'm going to change the color. Let's get blue. Now what I'm gonna do is I'm going to snap it to the middle. But I want it to cut it off
halfway across the shape. I'm going to duplicate it. Do the same thing on the bottom. The reason we do
this is because this is what's going to create
our seamless pattern. So you can see that this
circle is cut up halfway here. This circle is cut
off halfway here. So when we join them together, it is going to be an
infinitely seamless pattern.
3. Checking your basic pattern: Now what I'm going to
do is I'm going to download this just so that I
can show you the technique. I'm going to just
download it as a J peg. I'm going to create a
new page just to show you what this pattern looks like once you light
it up with each other. Okay, so I've just
saved that file and I'm going to re-upload
it back into Canvas. Now there's a couple
of ways that you can test out your pattern. And it's very important that
you test out your pattern. One way is you can
place your image, you can place your
image in and you can line them up into quarters. So you can save as I re-size, once it reaches the
quarter, it snaps. And I can duplicate that. Place them side-by-side. And look, we have got a
seamless pattern and you'll be able to see the lines
in the middle of them. Which is always
very frustrating. Which often happens when
you use that technique. Let me show you a different way. If you go into
elements of Canva, scroll down to greet, not frames, grids,
click, See All. Navigate and find someone
that is full equal. Frames. Click spacing. Make sure that your grid
spacing set to zero. So you can see that it's
removing any space in-between. Now go back to your uploads
and just click and drag your pattern into each one. Hopefully, that's
gotten rid of assaying. So if we zoom in, we can see that the line is just just something that's
popping up in Canva, but the scenes perfect, you cannot see where
they have joined. So there is your technique for creating a seamless pattern.
4. Pattern Technique #2: Okay, now I'm going to leave this grid here for
the next time, but I wanted to show
you another technique. This technique was using the circles in the
middle of the frame. And I want to show you as well how we can do that same
thing in the corner. It's going to be the
same kind of principle. But what we wanna
do is we want to snap it halfway on the vertical, snapped at halfway
on the horizontal. And now we want to duplicate and do that on all four corners. So snap it on the verticals, snap it on the
horizontal, duplicate it. We'll do the same thing. On each corner. We go. So now I can then duplicate these and
create a nice little passive. Maybe I'll resize
setting a new color. Then. We've got a new pattern
there and I've snapped these ones to the four corners. So that is going to be seamless. I'm going to download and save this one to show you again how this forms
the seamless pattern. Okay, so I've saved
that one now I want to re-upload it back into Canvas. And I'm going to repeat the same process to
test my pattern. Here we go. So we've
got a seamless pattern. Again, you can see the cross, but not only when you zoom out, but as you can see that he's now as seamless pattern that will, that you can use infinitely. You could have a new
patent on a billboard. And it would keep repeating.
5. Basic Techniques for a Complex Pattern: Now I want to show you how
we can use that technique, both of those techniques to create a more complex pattern. So what I'm going to
do for this one is I am going to use some
of canvas elements. I'm going to go into elements. And what I'd really like
to do for this one is I really love leaf and
floral elements. So that's what I'm
going to use to create my pattern width. And I'd like to have a dark
blue background for this one. So what I'm gonna
do is I'm going to start searching for elements. What I'm going to do
is the leaf outlines. Now you can use any
static elements so you can't use
animation loans, otherwise it will not download. But what I'm gonna
do is I'm going to choose this monstera, change it to white. So remember technique
where we like to snap it to the edge. With snapping it to the middle, snapping it to the edge. And I want to repeat
that on the other side. So make sure, making
sure it's in the middle. It's in the center
of the design. And it snapped halfway through. That way. Every time my
pattern is repeated, the leaves of joined
together, like Hey, let's find something else we
can add align at this one. So I'm speaking
here. What I'm gonna do this time is I'm
going to make it white. What I'm going to reduce
the opacity of it. It's like a blue color. And I'm just going
to add the elements, duplicate it and I'll flip it and maybe
rotate it a little. Then this is all about it's all about trial
and error and practice. Absolutely practice. If I put that here, I need to bear in mind that in my repeating pattern
just above here, I'm going to say this flower. Maybe I don't want both
of them to be so close, so I'll just bring
that one down here. Let's bring in some
more elements. Maybe, maybe I can
bring in this month, this little leaf as well
as Philadelphia in late. I'll pop that I'll
pop that up here. Now, I need to be careful. Anything that's needed the edge. So if it's near this top edge, it's going to be repeated
near this bottom edge, right? So perhaps what I can
do is if I want to overlap them and snap
it to the middle, I know that I have to repeat
it down here as well. However, in order to make sure that this is going to
repeat seamlessly, a good trick that I
can use these to bring a is to bring a guide across
that I can use to snap to. If I place it there, I can snap the plant
to the middle. That then I can also snap
it to the center of my God, can you see how that pops up
once it snaps to the center? So that way, I know that
when I duplicate it, I can snap it to the
bottom edge of my design. And I can snap it to the
middle of my god. That way. I know that when
it's off center, I know that it's still
going to line up. So that's a nifty little trick. You can always type the god. Why if you find it
a bit distracting? So now I need to find a new
space for this plant here. What I'm gonna do is
I'm just going to place different
elements on my design. Okay, so as you can see, there's a lot of, a lot of shifting and
a lot of moving around and basically playing
around with your design. So that it's, it's a nice, seamless pattern where there is a nice balance of elements
fitted around your art board. If you're going through
this process and you're struggling to
make it look right. It honestly is just
about missing around, just playing around
with your designs, moving them, practice,
practice, practice. So don't get frustrated
with yourself if you're, if you don't get it
right the first time, patent design is hard and I'm not even an expert,
a patent design. All I've done is I've practiced, I practice, I
practice, I practice. So I just want you to
remember that as well.
6. Checking your complex pattern: But I've reached
a point now where I'm happy with the
pattern that I've got. Like I've got a nice
even distribution of elements on the screen
that I think are going to make a nice pattern. One thing that I
might do though, is I'm just going to shift
this one down a little bit. So I'm going to
bring a guide across myself so that I
can make it even. And I'm going to re-size this leaf and I'm
going to bring it down halfway through
using my guides. Sorry, that it's nice and
even I'm just going to check cracked bring that. That's a lot of a
lot of shifting, a lot of moving till
you get it right. But once you do get it
right, it's hardly worth it. Okay. I can't get that
one snapping rod, so feel free to zoom
in if you need help. Snapping them into the
right spot. There we go. Alright, so now I'm
just going to move my God, that distracts me. Now I've got a design that I'm quite happy
with and I want to check and see whether
it is seamless or not. So again, we go
through the process. Again. I'm going
to save it as a, as a P and J this time because I want it to be
quite high-quality. So I'm going to download that and then I'm going to test out my design, the k. So coming back to our grid now, I want to upload the
design that I've got. And now we can test to see
whether it is seamless or not. We'll just wait for it to load. I'm going to place each
design into the grid. So now I've got a nice
seamless pattern. Ignoring the white lines
that always pop up. Got a nice seamless
pattern here. I can't see the same,
which is excellent.
7. Exporting your pattern tile: Okay, so once you've checked your pattern and you know
that it is seamless, you're happy with how it looks when it is a repeating pattern. Then your job is to export this file so that
it can be used. Now, depending on where
you are uploading this, you can just save it down light. I like to download them as a PNG because the
quality is higher. However, you end up with
a larger file size. Now, I tend to use 1,000, 1,000 pixels for when I'm uploading patterns
to red bubble, or when I'm creating my own designs because I
find that's a balance of a, a large enough design, but also not too
big of a file size. You may need you when you
want to export that as say 2000 by 2000,
depending on what it is, you can go all the way up
to 3300125 by 3125 pixels. But you can also, because a lot of the
elements that we used in this pattern
of vector elements, they will scale up. So you can always resize this art board to the
size that you need. But exporting as a PNG file
is my personal preference. Just because of quality, you can download and save
that to use as your pattern.
8. Your class project: So much for taking my
class on Skillshare, I really hope that you learned some new skills for my tutorial. I would really love to see the patterns that
you've created. Your project for
this class is to upload either a screenshot or the graphic of the pattern
that you've created or even products are mockups using the
pattern if you've created, I would so love to see it. I didn't really adult patterns. So go ahead and upload your
project to this class. Thank you so much for
watching again, I really, really appreciate it and I hope you get some value
from it as well. Go ahead and check out some
of my other classes here on Skillshare because she might
find them helpful as well. I hope to see you again
in another class.
Michelle Marks, Graphic Designer
