Pattern Tool Basics in Adobe Illustrator

1. Introduction: Welcome to my class on the Pattern Tool and Adobe Illustrator. I'm Amy, a surface pattern designer, illustrator, and Skillshare top teacher. The Pattern Tool makes it easy to explore different pattern layouts and see your adjustments in real time. So whether you're a beginner or a season designer, it can be fun to experiment with the different layouts using the Pattern Tool. In this class, I'll show you how to create some cute citrus motifs with basic shapes and Adobe Illustrator. Then we will explore all the pattern tool options in detail, including some of the nuances to using the brick and Hex Pattern types. At the end of class, we'll discuss adding a background color to your pattern swatch and how to export your pattern. It will be helpful to have some pattern design experience and know the basics of Adobe Illustrator before you get started. For an in depth look at creating patterns, check out my class geometric patterns, simple too sophisticated repeats in Adobe Illustrator, where I teach foundational skills for pattern design. I'm ready to get started. So if this class sounds fun, I'll see you in the first lesson. 2. Class Project: For the class project, we're going to create brick and hex patterns using the Pattern Tool and Adobe Illustrator. We'll start by creating the elements for our pattern. I'll show you how to import assets from Adobe Libraries and turn basic shapes into citrus fruits using the tools in Adobe Illustrator. Then we'll review the Pattern Tool options in detail and discuss the nuances of creating brick and hex patterns. You'll also learn how to plan your final swatch size when using the pattern tool. At the end of class, I'll show you how to add a background color and export your final patterns. You can follow along with me as I create a set of citrus motifs from basic shapes. In the Project and resources tab, I've included the color palettes I use in class, along with a list of keyboard shortcuts for both Mac and PC and reference guides for swatch sizes and converting pixels to inches when exporting your work. You can download these files from your browser and save them to your desktop. When you're ready, please upload your project to the class gallery. You can upload any part of your process, and I'd really love to see what you create. 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 add a project title and description and then upload your image and click Publish. In the next lesson, we'll start by setting up our Canvas and importing shapes from Adobe Libraries. 3. Importing from Adobe Libraries: First, let's set up a new file. I'll tap New File, and then I'll go ahead and give my file a name and just call it New pattern. And I'll leave the width and the height at 1,500 pixels, and just one artboard is fine. Now you can choose the same or a different size, but you can always change this later. And I'm going to keep the unit at pixels. But if you want to choose a different unit of measurement, you can do that here. And I'm also going to leave this at CMYK color mode. So with these selections, I'll tap create. Now, if your workspoos looks a little different than mine, you can always adjust the toolbars or add and remove windows, but you can also go up to Window workspace and choose Essentials Classic, which I have selected. You can add additional tools from this Windows menu as you need them. For this pattern, I'm going to focus on how to use the pattern tool, and I need motifs for my pattern. So I'm going to start with some shapes I already created in my class on geometric patterns in Adobe Illustrator. If you've taken that class, you may remember that we took circles and squares and turned them into several new forms. And at the end of the class, I showed you how to add shapes you created to your adobe libraries. In this lesson, I'll show you how I would take those shapes I saved and use them for this pattern. Down here, I have my library's panel. But if you don't see this in your panel doc, then go up to Window and click Libraries, and that panel will open up in your workspace. I'll just drag this over to the left side, and once I see the blue line, I'll let it go and lock into place there. And I'll use the space bar to drag this over just a bit to center it. And you'll see in my library's panel that I have all the shapes that I created in that class, as I mentioned earlier, and I want to use some of these shapes to create new elements for my pattern. So if I select this one, I can just click and then drag it over to my artboard. And with my shape cued up, I just click once to add it at its original size, which in this case is 100 pixel squared. Another option is to go back, click and drag just like before. But this time on the artboard, I click and I drag to set up the size I want it to be. And I can also change this size here in the control bar, making sure the proportions are constrained, and then I can type a specific size, and it will change proportionately. So that's one way to import my shapes. Now, you may notice that this method brings in an image and not a vector path. If I open up my layers panel over here, you can see that I have two artworks, but they're not paths, they're images, even though the original shapes I added to my libraries were vector paths. I'll press A on my keyboard to bring up the direct selection tool or you can find it over here in your tool bar. And you'll notice that you don't see any anchor points because this isn't a vector shape. So how can I import these shapes from the Adobe Libraries as vector pads? Well, this time, I'll press and hold Option on my keyboard as I click and drag this over. And now when I click to add this to my artboard, you can see the anchor points. And I also still have my direct selection tool opened up so you can see those anchor points. And I can do this with the second import option. So I'll press Option, click and drag, and this time, I'll click and drag on my artboard to size it something different than the original size. Yeah. You still have both options for import, but now you have vector paths instead of images. So just remember to use the option key if you want to import your vectors. I'm just going to delete these because I don't need them now. One last thing I do want to point out is that you can drag multiple shapes onto your artboard at once. So if I select this shape and then I press Shift on my keyboard and select another shape, then it'll select everything in between, as well. If I want to select nonconsecutive elements, I can press and hold command as I click and select different shapes. And then once I've selected all the shapes that I want to add, I simply press Option on my keyboard as I click and drag over to the artboard. And you can see that the first image is cued up. And like before, I can click and drag to resize the element, or I can simply click to add the element at its original size. And I'll just go through adding each element until I finished adding every single one, and it just goes right down the list. So those are some tips for adding elements that you have saved to your libraries. In the next lesson, I'm going to take these shapes and turn them into some citrus fruit motifs. They're nice, but they're super simple and very clean, and I want to make them a little more organic looking and not so perfect and uniform. So join me in the next lesson, and I'll show you how I'd create my new motifs. 4. Editing Your Elements: I've cleaned things up by removing some of the shapes I didn't need and ungrouping everything, so I can start transforming them into new shapes. I also want to pull in some color palettes I've created. I deleted the standard colors that come with a new file, and I'm ready to import my palette. So I'll go up to the file I've opened. And if you downloaded the file I shared in the resources tab, you can also open it up in Illustrator. I want to add these color palettes to the file I just created. And the easiest way is to go up to the swatch menu, go down to the Save swatch Library as AI option, and it should default to saving to your Swatches folder. So I hit Save, and now I can go to my new file and go down to my swatch libraries and select user defined, and I should be able to find the citrus color palettes. I need to just simply click each one of these groups, and it will automatically be added to the Swatches panel. And now I can just close this and I have all my palettes ready to go. I'll press Z on my keyboard, and then I'll just zoom in here a little bit to make this easier to see, and I'll press space bar for the hand tool and pan this down. I'll press V for the selection tool and select this circle. And the first element I'm going to make is a slice of citrus. I'll press Command C to copy and Command F to paste in front. And you can see in the layers panel, I have a copy directly on top of the original. Now I want to resize it using the bounding box. So from the corner or the sides, I'll press and hold the shift and option keys to constrain the proportions and resize it from the center. When I let go, I've got a slightly smaller circle inside the original. I'll give my duplicate shape a new color, and this will be the pith of my citrus slice. Next, I'm going to take one of these little wedge shapes, and I'll center it at the top of my circles. So you can see the pink line appear to tell me it's centered horizontally. And from here, I can stretch it using the bounding box. If I press Shift, it will resize it proportionally. And I could squeeze it a little bit. And if I press option as I squeeze, it'll resize it from the center rather than just from the left side. And I can press A on my keyboard for the direct selection tool, and I'll select this anchor point and adjust the handles, pressing Shift to keep it aligned, and then I'll do it again on the other side as well, so it'll flatten that top. I'll select the anchor points on the sides, holding shift to select both, and I'll drag them down a little bit. And then I'll go back and just adjust these handles to flatten it a little bit more. And I'm pressing Shift to keep the handles aligned. I also want to make the bottom narrow, so I'll pull the handles in a little on this anchor point and pressing Shift to keep it aligned. And I'll press V on my keyboard again to bring up the selection tool, and I'll just squeeze this in a little bit, pressing option to squeeze from the center, and I like that. And now I have a nice little wedge that I could duplicate around this circle to create the citrus pieces. Make these copies, I want to make sure that my wedge piece is selected, and I'll press R for the rotation tool. And before I do anything else, I'm going to hover to find the center of this cream circle. If I click, it'll move the point of rotation down to the center of that circle. Next, I want to press Option, and you'll see the double arrows appeal. And I'll click once, and it should bring up the bull's eye with the ellipses, and I'll click once more, and it brings up my rotate menu. I'll set the angle of rotation based on the number of copies I'll need, and 30 degrees should work perfectly. So I'll click Copy, and then you can see it adds a copy rotated to the left. And next, I want to press Command D several times until I complete that wedge of circles. I'll press V to go back to the selection tool, and I want to keep these aligned and grouped. So I'm going to select one, hold down Shift, and then click each additional wedge until I've selected all of them, and I'll press Command G to group them. So now if I want to resize the group, pressing Shift and option to resize it uniformly, it'll all size together. I'll press Command Z to undo that to go back to the original. So now I'm going to take one of these circles, and I'm going to add it to the center to create some seeds. And I need to make it a little bit smaller and maybe a little more oval shaped. When I'm done resizing, I'll press Option and drag to create a few duplicates. And then I'll press R because I want to rotate this one slightly and select that one and do the same thing. Press R to rotate. And now they resemble seeds in the center of my slice, and that looks pretty good. And I can keep playing around with this and refining it. But the next thing I want to share with you is how I might make these shapes look a little less uniform and perfect. So I'll press Z to zoom in and then Spacebar to move this down. And I'll press V, and then I'll drag to select both of these outer circles. And I want to loosen up the outline, so I'll go up to effect, distort and transform, and I want to use roughen. And this looks a little crazy at first, but I'll select absolute, and then I'll reduce this to maybe two pixels. Yeah, like that. I also want to reduce the detail. So let me take this down to maybe three pixels. I think that looks good. And I want to use smooth because I don't want sharp corners since this is a citrus slice, and I'll press. Okay. So you can see that it makes the contour slightly irregular and a little more organic. And you can opt to make yours more exaggerated or more subtle than mine. And I can also add the same effect to my wedge slices and my seeds in the center. But this is one way to make your shapes look a little more hand drawn while only using the tools in Illustrator. So I'll press on my keyboard and zoom back out, and let's work on the next element. To save time, I'll use part of what I've already created to start my next shape. So I'll press Option and drag this circle down to make a duplicate. I'll also recolor it, and this time, I'm going to make it into a lemon. So I want to stretch this into an oval shape. Next, I'll press Option to make a duplicate and then shift to drag it down in alignment. Next, I'll resize it from the top, pressing Shift to create a little nub at the end of the lemon. And that looks good. And I'll add another one at the top by pressing Option and Shift to duplicate it and keep it aligned vertically. And I don't want the top to be exactly the same as the bottom, so I'm going to flatten this one a little bit. And I'm going for imperfection here. And that's a bit much, but maybe I can shrink it down holding Shift to make it smaller. There we go. Okay, I like that. Next, I'll click and drag to select all three ovals, and I'll go over and click the Shape Builder tool. And now, if I drag through each of these shapes, I'll turn it into one single path. And now I have a shape that resembles a lemon. And the nice thing about creating any of these new forms is I can then create variations. So I'll press Option to duplicate it, and then I'm going to resize the proportions and change it up a little bit and give it a new color like this green, and this time, it's a lime. And I can also add embellishments. So I can take one of these circles, and let's change it to white for a better contrast, and I'll resize it a little smaller, and I'll press Z to zoom in so you can see this better. And then I want to press V on my keyboard and select this and drag pressing Option to duplicate it several times around my shape. And this adds some little textural dots. And I can add variations in size, oops, go shift too soon. But I can resize these two different sizes and distribute them throughout my fruit, you know, changing up the density. But I could create this texture that is a nice little addition for some embellishment. So I'll zoom out again. And lastly, I want to create some leaves for my citrus frit. And these green shapes are good starting point. So I'll press Z on my keyboard to zoom back into this area. And I already have this textured line from my geometric pattern class, so this will be perfect as my stem. And I'm going to select this leaf shape. I'll press Command C to copy and Command F to paste in front. And I'll press A for the direct selection tool, and I'm going to select this anchor point to manipulate the handle and curve the shape a little bit more. And I'll also bring this top one up, too. And I'll press V on my keyboard, select the bottom shape, and go over to the Swatches panel and create a darker color. So now I have a basic leaf shape. And if I select both of these, I can enhance it further by going to the effect menu, distort and transform and this time choose Twist. This menu lets you choose the angle of the twist, and the higher the number, the more extreme the twist. So I'll find something that I like and then click Okay. And anytime you use an effect, including the roughen option, you want to go up to Object Expand Appearance once you've settled on the form to make this change permanent. I'll press Z on my keyboard to zoom out so we can see how these shapes are coming together. And I want to do another variation on this leaf. So I'll select the next one, press Command C, then Command F to paste it in front, and then I'll press A so I can edit the anchor points again. And I want this to curve but not be exactly the same. So I'll select the bottom copy, and recolor it, and then select both and go back up to effect, transform twist. And this time, I'll choose 35 degrees so it's not as exaggerated and hit Okay. And then I want to go back up object and expand appearance. And now I've got a new variation of my leaf. Next, I'm going to recolor this shape to dark green and resize it so it can be my stem, and I'm going to take my lemon shape, and I'll move the stem to the top. But I think I want it to be in the back. So I'll press Command Option left bracket to send it to the back, and then I'll bring my leaf shape over and Oops, forgot to group these, so I'll select and Command G to group and now I can move this to the top of my stem, and then I'll take the next one, and I'm going to press R so I can rotate it slightly. And then I'll press O so I can reflect it. Oops. Command Z to undo that. And I need to make sure that the expand appearance is set up. There we go. Let's try that again. So I'll press O on my keyboard so I can reflect it. And then I'll just move it over a little bit. And yeah, I think that looks better. So this is coming together. I can also grab this circle again and drag it down here, and then I'll add the leaves and stems to it. But this time, I want it in front, so command shift right bracket will bring it to the front. And now I can actually shrink this stem a little bit, move this up, and then give it a new color, and now it's transformed into an orange. So I can work with these shapes to transform them again and again into something new. Also have this version, which was already halved into semicircles. So I could take half of these wedge pieces and add them to the Syme circle to create a citrus wedge. And then I'd have a wedge, a slice, and a whole fruit. And this creates a nice set of elements for my pattern that adds variety without having to start from scratch every single time. You can see how you can add texture, some irregular contouring, change up the colors, and then really transform these shapes into a variety of different citrus fruit motifs. In this way, there's a little variety to the repetition of elements. I'll finish creating two or three versions of the wedge, the slice, and the whole fruit, and each time I'll change the color to reflect the different fruits. So yellow lemons, green limes, some oranges, maybe a pink shade for grapefruit and so on. And before the next lesson, I want you to take some time to create your own fruits and have fun manipulating these shapes using the effects. Just be sure to expand appearance if you add any effect. When you're ready, meet me in the next lesson so we can turn these elements into a pattern using the pattern tool. 5. Pattern Tool Options: I finished creating all of my elements and coloring them with one of the color palettes I imported. And you should have your own set of elements, and you can follow along with me as I design my patterns. I need to select all of my elements, so I'll drag to select everything. Now, I haven't arranged these into a pattern layout because I can do that with the pattern tool. The configuration will change based on the layout I choose, so I don't need to arrange things ahead of time. Now, if you've already laid yours into a pattern, that's okay, too. So with my elements selected, I'll go up to object, pattern make. A dialog box will come up just telling me that the pattern swatch has been added to the Swatches panel, and any changes I make will be applied once I exit the tool. So I'll click Okay. And you can see this blue outline which marks the edges of my pattern tile. The default color is dark blue, but you have the option to change it. I'll just go over to this menu and select tile edge color. And I can go to this drop down menu and choose what color I want to change it to. So maybe I'll try this green color. Now, you can also make this new color your default, and if you're happy, just click Okay. And now my tile edge color has changed. Next, let's go to the name field and give our pattern swatch a name. So I'll just call this citrus Pattern. Next, we can select a tile type, and you can see there are five options, but it's really three main types, grid, brick and hex. And the brick and hex options let you choose between row or column. So if I select a grid, you'll notice that the brick offset is grade out because this only applies when you select brick by row or brick by column. So if I choose one of those, it'll now be able to show me the brick offset options. I can also see a little pattern swatch preview over here. I'll press Z on my keyboard, and I'm just going to zoom, zoom out a little bit to make this easier to see as I make these edits. I'll press V on my keyboard to go back to the selection tool. Now, you can see the default brick offset is one half. If you've created a brick or half-drop before, then you've likely used a half offset standard. But you have additional offset options in this dropdown menu. So what is fun about the pattern tool is you can play around with different offsets. You can try one third or maybe three fifths offset, and you can see how that changes the layout. Next, we can see the width and height of our pattern tile. So I can click inside this field and type in a specific size. I'll press tab to move to the next field, and the tile adjusts accordingly. I can also lock the proportions so that if I make an adjustment in one field, it'll update the other field in proportion. I can also adjust the size incrementally. So I can see how the pattern changes by using the upper down arrows. So I'll click the down and it reduces the width by one pixel. I can also press Shift and the down arrow, and it reduces it by ten pixels. And then if I press command, I will decrease it by one tenth of a pixel. Next, we have the option to size tile to art. So if I click here, it will update the tile size to the farthest edges of my artwork. And this can be good reset if needed. You'll notice that if I move anything, the tile size shifts along with it. And this can be helpful when you first start arranging your elements so you can spread out the artwork and then the tile size adjusts with the movement. You'll also notice that when size tile to art is checked, you have the option to set the horizontal and vertical spacing. If I uncheck this box, the width and height filter editable again, and with it checked, the width and height are grade out, but I see the horizontal and vertical spacing options. So I can set this to 100 pixels, and I'll set the vertical spacing to negative 100 pixels. No 1,000, just 100. And this will cause my elements to overlap because the negative vertical spacing means it falls inside the tile boundary. So my horizontal spacing is a positive number set at 100 pixels, and there's this gap from the tile boundary to the artwork. If I go back and I make this negative as well, it'll make the spacing tighter. Now, if I were to drag this citrus slice over to the tile edge, these elements will overlap each other. You'll also notice that my tile edge isn't resizing when I make small adjustments to my artwork because the negative space changes the parameters a bit. Next, we have move tile with art, and I'm going to turn off size tile to art for now so we can see how move tile with art works. I'll press Command A to select all of my elements because this feature only really works if you select everything. Now, if I move this as a group, my tile will move along with it. Again, when I move these elements, my tile moves too. I'll press the space bar for the hand tool and pan over a little bit, and I'll click once to deselect. If I were to select only one piece, you can see the tile stays in place because this is only effective if you're moving the entire group of elements. So you can use this feature as needed. I'll turn that back off for now. And next, we have the overlap options. So this first set is for left or right overlap. So right now I have left in front, and you can see that these pieces overlap each other. So if I go back and I select right in front, the elements switch. Same with the top and bottom. So these pieces overlap, and I can shift which is in front. Now, this feature only applies if you have overlapping elements. Next up, we can choose the number of copies we see. Right now I have three by three, but I could change that to five by five if I want to see more copies. And I can also change it to three by one and only show top and bottom or one by three, where I'm only showing the repeat on the sides. And you can decide how many copies you want to view and you can switch between them as needed. You also have the option to just see one by one, which only shows your tile. Here you can choose to dim copies. So as you're arranging elements in tight spacing, it can get confusing. When I click on the right one, it will be highlighted, but it's not always easy to tell that right away. So if you have duplicated elements and you're not sure which ones are the originals, you can dim your copies. So I'll go over here, check this. And now everything that isn't the original is dimmed. You can also choose how much to dim the copies. So you can choose 20%, so your art will really stand out, or you can keep it subtle so that you're still able to see the repeat. If your pattern is dense or you have several duplicated elements, adjusting the dimness of your copies can really help you keep things straight. You can also turn off your tile edge. Now, generally, I like to see my tile edge, but I find this helpful when I want to check how my pattern repeat is looking without having the tile as a distraction, especially if you then increase the copies to say, five by five and then fill the workspace with the pattern. So I'm going to click to show my tile again. You can also choose to show the swatch bounds, and this will show you the full swatch size. So right now, I have the brick by column tile type at three fifth offset. So my swatch is very wide. Let me drag this over, and you can see it actually stretches quite a bit to create that swatch. If I switch to brick by row, the swatch dimensions are going to change. I'll press space bar to pan this down and you can see the full swatch height. I'll go back over and turn off the swatch bounds. And the last thing we need to look at is the pattern tile tool. So if I turn this on, you can see that I'm able to manually adjust the tile size, so I can drag from the corners, the sides or the top and bottom. And if I press Shift, I can size it proportionately. I press Option and Shift, I can resize everything from the center proportionally. So I can size it horizontally, vertically or from the corners. You also have this diamond here, which only shows up if you have a brick tile type set because it's for adjusting the offset. So if I go back and I choose grid, it disappears since there's no offset to adjust. But if I go back and I select brick by row, you can see it's in the middle because it defaults back to half. If I slide this over, it will cycle through the different brick offsets, and you can see the field has changed to two thirds. There's one at the top and there's one at the bottom, but they do the same thing. So you can use the Pattern tile tool to make your adjustments rather than changing the width and height here. And if you prefer to make adjustments from the tile bounding box, you can use this option instead. Now, to go back to normal editing, you just click to turn the tool off. Once you're satisfied with your pattern, you can either click Done, or you can just double click anywhere in the workspace to exit your pattern swatch, and it'll be saved. So here is my saved pattern swatch, and you can see that it takes you right back to the original workspace just like when you started. In the next lesson, we're going to take a deeper dive into creating brick patterns. 6. Brick Patterns: In the last lesson, we reviewed all of the pattern options. In this lesson, we're going to review a few more basic tips and then dive deeper into brick patterns. So to go back into the pattern options and edit the pattern I just created, all I have to do is go up to my pattern swatch and double click, and it'll bring it right back up. So first, understanding how to save changes is important. Now, let's say that I move this orange over here. Up at the top, I have a few options for exiting the pattern tool. If I click Cancel, it would exit the pattern options, and it wouldn't save the changes that I just made. If I click Done, it'll save that change to my original swatch. So it'll save over my original version and update that swatch. If I click Save a copy, it will add a new swatch to my swatches panel with this change. So I can create different swatch versions. Now, you may want to make a few different versions to compare different layouts, and you can save several copies and then decide which one you like best. So, the other thing to note is that there are multiple ways to save your swatch besides clicking done, and all of them will exit the pattern options and save your original swatch. First, I can double click anywhere in open space, and it'll exit and update the swatch. Now, when I open that back up, you'll see that the change I made to the orange was saved. Now, this is important to keep in mind, since you might accidentally double click in the space and save over the original. Another way you can exit is to click this arrow up here, and that will also save your changes to the swatch. And then if you double click, you can edit it again, and the changes are saved. Now the last option is simply press Command S on your keyboard to save changes. Then if you want to go back in, just double click to edit. So you can click Done. Click the arrow, press Command S on your keyboard or double click anywhere in open space, and all of these actions will exit the Pattern Tool and save changes to your swatch. Now, I opened to the Pattern Tool before arranging my elements. Let's take a look at some of the ways we can edit the elements as we build our pattern. Now, obviously, we can move them around I can press R on my keyboard to rotate this orange. I can press O on my keyboard to open the reflect tool. So one rotates and the other one flips the object. If I press V on my keyboard for the selection tool, I can also, of course, rotate using my bounding box. I can also resize it and just remember to press Shift to keep it in proportion. And then, of course, if you press Shift and option, it resizes it from the center. And lastly, I can press Option and drag to create a copy. So it's easy to create duplicates. I don't actually want a duplicate of my orange, so I'm going to press delete. But I do want more of my little flowers, so I'll click and drag while pressing Option to duplicate this flower. And as I'm making changes, I can see in real time how the changes are affecting the layout of my pattern. So let's say I want to resize all of my elements together and keep them in proportion. I'll press Command A to select all of my elements, and then I can resize everything uniformly by pressing Shift as I drag from this corner. This is helpful if you need to reduce the size of your tile significantly. By pressing Command A, you'll select every element, so you can make changes to the group rather than resizing one element at a time. Now, if you want to make the same changes to just a few elements, you can select and then press Shift as you select additional elements. When you press Command A, it selects everything that is in your tile, but not the copies, because the copies will be transformed by whatever you do to the elements in your tile. So to deselect, just click once in your workspace. Next, let's talk about the tile size versus the swatch size when using the brick pattern types. To create a brick by row, you are offsetting every other row. I'll press Z on my keyboard to zoom out a little bit. So you can see my tile boundary here. Let me press V for the selection tool. And then this is my swatch boundary. Because of the additional rows needed to create a full repeat, the swatch height is more than its width. So my tile size and my swatch size will change based on the brick offset I choose. Right now I have two thirds offset, which means the swatch needs two extra tiles to create the repeat. In this case, my swatch height will be three times my tile height because I chose brick by row. Width and height I set in my pattern options is the width and height of my tile. The swatch width and height is adjusted to accommodate the offset I choose. So if you need your swatch to be a specific size, you need to choose a tile width and height that factors in the extra dimensions needed for the offset you choose. Two thirds and one third share the same number of extra tiles. With both options, you need three times your tile size. If I select brick by column, I need extra width to accommodate the extra columns. You can see my swatch boundary changes to three times the width of my tile. So when you set up your tile width, the swatch width will triple in size. If I change the offset to one fourth, you can see the swatch boundaries get wider. Now, the swatch width is four times the tile width. You can see there is 1.5 tile widths on either side. And so any offset that has four in the denominator will increase the swatch boundary four times the width you entered in the options panel. And of course, if I change to brick by row, it quadruples the height. You'll notice that the denominator of the offset is the multiplier. If it ends in four, it'll be four times the height or width. So one third, two thirds, equals three times, three fourths, one fourths equals four times, and the fifths would be five times. So if you choose two fifths, the swatch will be really stretched out. I'll press Z on my keyboard for the Zoom tool and you can see my swatch height is very tall because it's five tiles high. You can experiment with the offsets, but you'll want to pay attention to your overall swatch size. Going to go back to one third because I like that option. I'll press Z and zoom in just a little bit, and I'll use my space bar to bring up the hand tool and pan down, and I'll press V for my selection tool. So if you know you need to export a specific swatch size, set your offset and select brick by row or column, and then based on those selections, set your width and height accordingly. So this is a brick by row with a one third offset. I would set my height to be one third the final swatch size I need. I'm going to lock those proportions, and let's say that my final swatch height needs to be 1,200 pixels. I would divide that by three. And that would make my tile height 400 pixels. When I press Enter, my tile size shrinks dramatically, but my elements are the same size. So I'll press Command A to select everything, and then pressing Shift and option at the same time, I can resize my elements to fit this new size tile. With everything still selected, I'll drag them to the center of my tile. Whoops. I've moved tile with arts checked, so let me turn that off and try that again, and that's better. I'll press Z on my keyboard and zoom back in so you can see this better. Now, I've resized my tile, and I've resized my elements to fit the new tile size. Now, you'll notice that my swatch proportions change to a square. Ultimately, the only thing that needs to increase is the height because I have a brick by row selected. But when your tile size gets smaller, the swatch boundary may look a little different. So let me unlock this, and if I make the width double the height, it'll go back to only showing the extra height of my swatch. And it can be a little confusing, but regardless of whether your swatch is a square or rectangle, the important factor is the offset value and how much it increases your swatch size. Most people are used to using half offsets. Oops. Wrong selection. There we go. So usually the most you have to factor in is doubling the size. And you can see a half tile on either side. If you've ever created a brick repeat or a half-drop repeat, you're used to these dimensions. Working with the additional offset values is a little different, but can be fun to explore. So now I'm going to start laying out my brick pattern. I'll go back to the one third offset, and I'll reduce the width to 600 pixels, that's good. And I'll click once to deselect my elements, and now I can start spacing everything out and arranging them around the tile. And as I make my changes, I can see how the pattern layout looks with my copies. So I'll start with these larger elements first and move on to the smaller ones next. And I'm going to speed this up so you don't have to watch this whole process as it can take a little while. Okay, so my pattern layout is coming together. And at this point, one thing I could do is turn off my tile edge to focus on the swatch layout. And I can look for holes in the spacing or crowded elements. Anything that might draw the eye or call attention. And if I'm happy with this, I can click Done and save over the old swatch. I can also save a copy, and I can give that copy a name, call it citrus, pattern, brick. And then I'll click Okay. And this just tells me that a new pattern swatch has been added, which you can see here in the panel, but I still have the original. And I'll click Okay. And if I double click to exit, it'll also update the original swatch. I'll press Option Command zero to fit my artboard to screen, and then I'll press Z to zoom out a little bit, and I'll just move this over. And I'll press M on my keyboard for the rectangle tool, and I'll draw a square that is filled with my pattern swatch. I'll right click and go to transform scale, and I need to turn off transform objects, and I'll increase the pattern scale by pressing Shift plus the up arrow. That's good. So I'll click Okay. And this is a pretty decent pattern layout. But if I want to make any adjustments, I just go back to the swatch and double click to make edits. Now that you understand some of the nuances of brick pattern tiles, go ahead and work on your own brick pattern. And in the next lesson, we'll discuss Hex Pattern tiles. 7. Hex Patterns: In the last lesson, we discussed the brick pattern layouts in detail. And in this lesson, I want to go over Hex patterns. I'll open the pattern swatch I just created, so I'll double click the swatch. And I'll immediately click Save a copy, and I'll name it citrus Pattern Hex, and click Okay, and I'll click Okay again. Now, next, I'll click Cancel so that I exit that swatch before making any changes to my brick pattern. Now I can double click to open the saved copy to create a Hex Pattern. I can change the layout and not worry about accidentally saving over my brick pattern. So I'm going to press Z on my keyboard and zoom in a little bit. And I'll press V on my keyboard to go back to the selection tool. Now, over here in my pattern options, I want to choose hex by column or row, and I'm going to pick hex by column. And you'll notice that the tile shape converts to this hexagonal pattern. So the repeat is going to behave differently than the square tile shape. And you'll notice that the motifs on the sides automatically overlap, and they crowd together when you go from the straight edges to the diagonal edges of the hex tile shape. And I'm going to dim this to about 40%, so it's easier to identify which elements are the ones that I can move. I'm also going to change my width to 480 and press tab and then make the height 480 to change the dimensions in my new pattern. At first glance, the hex pattern looks very similar to a half-drop layouts. While the brick pattern lets you choose from several offset increments, the Hex pattern offset is preset. So similar to brick patterns, Hex by column adds extra width to the swatch, and Hex by row adds extra height. So while my tile size is 480 by 480, the swatch height is not because you have to account for the additional columns needed to complete the repeat. My tile width is 480, so I need to multiply that by 1.5 to figure out my swatch width, which equals 720. So if I make the tile height 720, my swatch will be 720 by 720. And you can see now that my swatch is square because 480 times 1.5 is 720, which is the same height I have entered here. And now I am appropriately accounting for the additional width my offset columns will add to my swatch. Another thing to note is how to set up your swatch so that it exports to the size you need. If you like working in pixels, but you need to export in inches, you need to understand that Adobe Illustrator uses a resolution of 72 PPI. So 72 pixels equals 1 ". And if you need to export your artwork at, say, ten by 10 ", then you need to set your artwork to be 720 by 720 pixels. So you can either multiply your inches by 72 to find your pixel size or divide your pixels by 72 to determine how many inches it will export. I've created a quick reference guide for converting inches to pixels to make this easy for you, and you can download it from the resources tab. Now, this current swatch size is 720 pixels squared, which means if I export this in inches, it would be 10 " squared. Resolution I choose when I export will not change the size and inches. It'll only change the resolution. Multiples of 72 don't make for the easiest conversions, so Illustrator can help you with your formulas. So let's say that I need a 12 by 12 inch swatch. I can go over to my width field and type in 12 times 72, and it does the math and gives me 864 pixels. So now I know that 864 pixels in Illustrator will export to 12 ". Now, because this is hex by column, I have to account for the extra column width. And I know my swatch width is going to be 1.5 times whatever I put in this field. I need to figure out what number multiplied by 1.5 equals 864. And all I have to do is type divide by 1.5, and that gives me 576. I also need to change my height to 864, and you can see, now I have a square swatch. My tile width is 576 pixels, making my swatch width 864 pixels, and my height is 864 pixels, which converts to a 12 by 12 inch swatch. I hope this helps you if you're asked to export your work to a specific size in inches. You can, of course, work in inches if that's easier, but if you're already working on pixels, these tips should help you easily convert your work to inches. I'm actually going to change this back to my original size of 480 by 720 pixels because I like that size, and I can start adjusting the layout of these elements to better fix this hex pattern. And I'll just speed this up a little bit. So I would continue making adjustments until I'm happy with my pattern. Because I started by saving a copy, I can just click Done and it'll exit and save my changes. You can also use any of the other methods I showed you earlier to exit and save your work. If I go back over to my swatch and double click, you can see my pattern changes are saved. So take some time to make your own hex pattern and practice setting up your swatch size for export. When you're ready, meet me in the next lesson, where I'll show you how to add a background color to your swatches. 8. Adding a Background: At this point, you should have created your own brick and or hex patterns. In this lesson, I want to discuss adding a background color to your swatches, because right now these patterns have a transparent background. So first, I'll show you what would happen if I were to add a background color while I was working inside the Pattern Tool options. I'm going to press M on my keyboard, which will bring up the rectangle tool, and I'll click and draw a square. It's automatically filled with my pattern, but let's change that to a background color. Now, it's in front of all my elements, so I'll press Command Option left bracket to send it to the back, but it's going to cover up parts of my pattern. Even if I try resizing it, this background layer is treated like any other shape in my repeat, and it's subject to the overlap settings. So it doesn't really work to add a background color this way. I'll press delete to remove that shape, and I'll go up and click Done. Now I want to go over to my pattern swatch and click and drag it onto my workspace. And now you can see the full swatch that was created with the pattern tool. I'll go over to my Layers panel and I'll open this group. If I select this path, you'll see that it is 720 pixels wide by 720 pixels high as I had calculated in the last lesson. So my tile was 480 by 720, my swatch is 720 by 720. All I have to do is take this path, which is the swatch boundary with no fill and no stroke and press Command C to copy and Command F to paste in front. Over in the Layers panel, you can see the added copy right on top. It has no fill and no stroke, so I'll select the top copy and give it a background. Now I can either select the group in the layers panel or I can click and drag to select everything and drag it over to my swatches panel. I'll press Delete. I'll press in my my keyboard again to bring up the rectangle tool, and I'll draw square and fill it with my new pattern swatch. And it's that simple to add a background color to your pattern swatch. I'm going to delete this, and I'll drag my swatch back out, and I'll press V on my keyboard and move this down. You may notice that when you drag your pattern swatch into your workspace, some of the elements on your borders are incomplete. Let me press Z to zoom in here so you can see this better. Now, the reason part of my lime slice is missing is because only elements that cross the pattern swatch boundary are shown. And this is a group of shapes and the extra wedges fall outside the swatch. So I'll press Z to zoom out a little bit. And if this bothers you, you can move a full piece in its place. Since this is a group, I'll double click to Enter Isolation mode, and I can delete this incomplete piece. Next, I'll go to that slice that is complete, and this is all grouped, so I'll press Ship Command G to ungroup it. And now if I click outside the group and then select the slice, I can move it the height of my swatch. I'll press Shift Command M to bring up the move tool, and I don't want to move it horizontally, but I do want to move it vertically, 720 pixels. If I click Copy, it'll place a copy at the bottom. So you can reconfigure your border elements if them being incomplete bothers you. It's not necessary for the swatch to repeat, but just something to note. So that's how you add a background and how you would fix up the elements in your swatch if you want to. In the next lesson, we will talk about exporting your work. 9. Exporting Your Work: Mm. Now that we've created our patterns, we need to save and export our work. The first thing I want to do is save my swatches. So I'll go up to my swatch menu here and go down to Save swatch Library as AI. And similar to how we saved the color palettes at the beginning of class, I'm going to save this as a swatch library. I'll give this a name and call it citrus Swatches, and it should default to saving it in the Swatches folder, so I'll click Save. And that'll save all those color palettes, but it'll also save all the pattern swatches I created, as well. And then if I ever want to use my swatches, I can find them in my swatch library's menu like I did when I imported the color palettes. To export your work for class, all you need is a JPEG. So we'll start by making an artboard. If I press Shift O, it will bring up the Artboard tool, and you can also find that here on your toolbar, and then I'll click and drag out an artboard. Up here, I can set the size. And we discussed converting pixels to inches in the last lesson, so I can set this size for a specific output in inches if needed. So if I use the same size as my swatch, I'll make this 720 pixels and then click to make the width 720 pixels, and now I have a nice square ten inch artboard. I'll press M on my keyboard to bring up the rectangle tool. And if I click once, I can set my height and width to match my artboard size, and I'll click Okay. And that has added a white square to my artboard, and I'll go over and click to fill it with my pattern swatch. I'll press V on my keyboard for the selection tool again, and now I have an artboard with my pattern swatch that can be exported. If I wanted to export the swatch itself, I could click and drag it from the swatches panel. So instead of having a shape with a pattern fill, I could export the full swatch size if I need to upload it for printing. If you're exporting the pattern field shape, you can also scale it. Just right click and go to transform scale and make sure to turn off transform objects and keep transform patterns. You want to scale it uniformly so you can decrease the scale by pressing Shift and the down arrow or increase with the up barrow. When I'm done, I'll click Okay. And with our artwork setup, we're ready to export it. I'll go up to file, go down to Export and Export As, and I'll give my file a name. We'll call it citrus Pattern. Choose where to save it here and then choose the format from this drop down menu of options. And I'll select JPEG, so I can upload this to the Project and resources tab of the class. Use Artboards should be checked, and you can choose to use all artboards or just range. So I have two artboards, one here and one here, but all I really want to export right now is Artboard two, containing my pattern. So I'll click Export and I get the JPEG options. I can choose the color mode here. If I'm exporting this for screens, I need to select RGB and see MKS for print media. Next, I can choose the resolution. If this is for screens, then 72 PPI is sufficient, and then I want to choose art optimized. You were exporting for print and needed high resolution, then you choose CM white color mode and 300 PPI. But regardless of the resolution I select, my 720 pixel square artboard will export to 10 ". So in this case, it'll just be 72 PPI. So I'll click Okay. Now, you may need to also export this as a PDF. So to do that, you can go back up to File export, Export As, and then you can switch the format to PDF. And once again, I can give this a name, so I'll call it citrus Pattern. And now when I click Export, it brings up the Export Adobe PDF options. You can play around with the settings, but one thing I want to point out is preserve Illustrator editing capabilities. If this is unchecked, it will export a flattened image. If you check this box, then your PDF can be opened in Illustrator with all of its layers. So if you're sharing this with someone and you don't want to give them access to all of your layers, you need to leave this box unchecked. Once you've made your selections, just click Export PDF and you're done. So all you need to upload for the class project is a JPEG of your work. You can export your final pattern, or if you create multiple versions, you can share as many as you like to the class Gallery page. I hope you'll upload a project so I can see what you created in class. In the next lesson, we'll wrap up the class with some final thoughts. 10. Final Thoughts: I hope you had fun exploring the Pattern Tool and we continue to create more patterns. I'd really love to see what you create, so please share your project to the class gallery. You can share your thoughts and ask questions in the discussion section of the class. And I'd also love for you to leave a review. Reviews help other students find this class, so please consider leaving a review. And if you enjoyed this class and want to learn more from me, check out my other classes here on Skillshare. Click the follow button if you want to say UT 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.