Pop Art Star Pattern in Adobe Illustrator - A Graphic Design for Lunch™ Class

1. Pop Art Star Pattern in Illustrator - Introduction: Hello, I'm Helen Bradley. Welcome to this Graphic Design for Lunch Class, create a pop-up star pattern in Adobe Illustrator. Graphic Design for Lunch is a series of classes that teach a range of tips and techniques for creating designs and for working in applications such as Illustrator, Photoshop, and Procreate. Today we're going to create a pop art style star pattern in Illustrator, and I'm going to start by looking at the final pattern and explain to you why we're designing it the way we are in Illustrator. There's some interesting concepts of work in actually how this pattern is all going to go together. Then once we've looked at how are we going to do it, we'll go and do it in Illustrator. The process is going to be identical for all versions of Illustrator. So even if you're using a really early version, it's going to work perfectly for you. As you're watching these videos, you will see a prompt which lets you recommend this class to others. Please, if you're enjoying the class, do two things for me. Firstly, give it a thumbs-up, and secondly, write just a few words about why you're enjoying the class. These recommendations help other students to say that this is a class that they too might enjoy. If you'd like to leave a comment or a question, please do so. I read and respond to all of your comments and questions, and I look at and respond to all of your class projects. Now let's get started creating our pop art style star pattern in Illustrator. 2. Pt 1 - Planning the Design: If you've been watching my classes, you know that I like to throw a little bit of extra information into all of my classes. So today's little extra bit of information is how I went about creating this pattern. I saw it on the Internet and I really liked it. I printed it out and had a really good look at how I could make it. What I saw was that there was this diamond shape here that was rotated around a central point. Then over here is the same diamond shape. It's just that they moved and laid across the previous one and so too down here. I thought if I could make three of these diamond shapes and line them up all over the top of each other, then I might have the solution for my pattern. Let's go and have a look at it in illustrator. I'd start out by making the fundamental design. Now in this case, the colors are reversed from the pattern that you just saw. Black is where white would be, and white is where black would be. That was just needed so that I could actually see things on the screen. I started with the fundamental shape and I'm going to show you in a few minutes exactly how you're going to create that. Then I went and created my shapes. I did the rotation and I got all my shapes out, and that was where I ran into a bit of a problem. You see, it wasn't that easy to make sure that all of these shapes lined up perfectly. Sometimes they seemed like they're lined up perfectly but they weren't, and if they don't line up perfectly, then the whole pattern is going to array. What I decided to do was work out a different way of approaching the task. So instead of approaching the task as three stars, this is what I decided to do. I noticed that this black star shared a point with this red star here, and what I decided to do was instead of making a red star and a black star, what I would do is I would use this point of the black star to be the starting point for my red star. So the point would already be part of the black star and then if I just rotated it around to make the red star, then it would be in the right position in both stars. Then what I did was I went to the next star and I said, "These two stars, the blue and the red, share this point." So instead of making a red star and a blue star, what I would do is make a red star and then use this point and rotate it around to make the third star. Because these were part of the original shape, they would always be in the correct place, and so these stars would interlock perfectly. That's how we're going to make this pattern. So the design that I worked out and the process that I worked out for making it, meet my needs for being able to teach a pattern in illustrator. I'm just going to show you what they are. Firstly, it has to work. So you have to be able to actually make this pattern, and also needs to be effective to create. So I don't want to be waffling around going in all directions with the pattern. It also needs to show something different. That's my gift to you, so that each class is different from every other class. It also needs to be free from size specifications. I really hate classes where people say everything's got to be a certain size, if I can be free from size specification, then that's a real plus, and it needs to be easy to re-color. Right now our pattern piece that we were just looking at was only two colors, it would not have been easy to re-color. In the one that we're actually going to make, we're going to build in the re-coloring option. Let's get started. 3. Pt 2 - Build the Star: Now we understand the basics of how we're going to create this pattern. Let's start. I'm going to choose File and then New. I'm just using a 700 pixel by 700 pixel document, RGB color mode and I have aligned new objects to pixel grid disabled. I'll click "Okay". Now to start off with, we need a four-sided figure that has an angle in the middle that is 60 degrees. That's not as easy to create as you might think, if you think of it in terms of being a four-sided figure but if you think of it in terms of being two triangles, then it is easy. We're going to click here on the Polygon Tool. I'm going to click in the middle of the document. I'm going to create a three-sided figure and I can set the radius to whatever I like. I'm going to set mine to 70 and I'll click, "Okay" What we have here is what's called an equilateral triangle. All the sides are equal and all these angles are equal, and they're all 60 degrees. That's the 60-degree point that we need to rotate this shape around. I'm going to start by filling this shape with a color and I'm going to remove the stroke. Just do that, get rid of these strokes because it's not going to help you in designing this shape at all. Now we want another one of these. I'm going to choose Object, Transform, Reflect. I'm going to reflect over the horizontal. Turn Preview on and you'll see that the triangle goes the other way. That's perfect. I'm going to click "Copy". Now I have two triangles. I'm going to the Selection Tool. I'm just going to align these so that they are perfectly aligned. If you want to make sure that they're super perfectly aligned, select either both of them and go to the alignment panel, which you can also get to by choosing Window, Align. Click here and choose Show options. Then click here on Align to and choose Align to Selection. You don't want to align to the art board, just want to align to selection. You're going to click here on Horizontal Aligned Center. That makes sure they're perfectly aligned to each other. If we want to make sure that they're jammed up against each other, here's how we'll do it. I'm going to click here and choose Aligned to Key Object. It doesn't matter which of these objects turns blue around the outside. We're going to make sure that this says zero pixels, and then we're going to click here on Vertical Distribute Space, and that just makes sure that they're butted up against each other with no space in between. Select over both of these shapes, go to the Pathfinder palette, again, if you can't see it, choose Window and then Pathfinder and click Unite. That just gives us our starting shape. We want a copy of that. We are going to select it and choose Edit, Copy, Edit, Paste in Place. Paste in Place is critical. Choose one of this shape immediately over the top of the other one. We're going to change the color, because we're going to build this up in different colors so that we could potentially make it black and white layer on, but we have the option of making it multicolored as well. I'm going to bring up my last palette. I'm going to make sure it's visible because it's really critical that you can lock things down here so nothing moves. What we want to do at this stage is to just lock down the black path. We just got the red path, the one at the top selected. Go to the Direct Selection Tool and just select either these middle two points. Go to select these two points. Go to the Scale Tool and double-click on it. What we want is a non-uniform scale. We want to scale it horizontally but not vertically. Turn Preview on and then just experiment with values for the percentage until you get the result that you want. I'm finding that 70 percent is pretty good for this so I'm just going to click "Okay". Now I have my red shape and I want to take a copy of it. I'm going to select it again with the Selection Tool. You want to make sure that you're using the Selection Tool and you're not just selecting the two points that you had selected before or disaster's going to strike. Edit, Copy, Edit, Paste in Place. We're going to lock down the back red copy. We're going to go to the front red copy and we're going to change its color. For convenience, I'm just going to choose a dark color so I get this alternating dark-light, dark-light through the shape. Now that I've locked this down, I want to go back to the Direct Selection Tool. Select over these two middle points, double-click the Scale Tool, make sure that I have Preview turned on. I want non-uniform and I just want to start bringing that in. I'm thinking that, probably about 70 percent on this shape, which is 70 percent of the previous shapes going to be perfect, but you can choose whatever value you like. Click "Okay". Now we're going to make a duplicate of this. Instead of doing Edit, Copy, Edit, Paste in Place, what you can also do is you can just take this path and drag it onto the new layer icon. Exactly the same result. Lock down the back copy, select the top most copy, change it's color and because we're going light-dark, light-dark, we need to go light now. I'm going to do a bright pink here. Select over the middle points here, double-click on the Scale Tool. This is our last shape and so I'm just going to bring it in, probably to about 50 percent and click "Okay". Now I have the starting shapes. I'm going to unlock all of these. I'm going to select the entire layer, which is the four shapes I have here, and I'm going to group them, Object, Group. Now that means that they won't move relative to each other. They're locked together. So this little shape is now stable and it's ready to be our first star. I'm thinking it's a bit big, so I'm going to select over it, hold the shift key as I just scale it down and that just scales it in proportion. That ensures that this remains a 60-degree angle. Now for our first star, I'm going to select of the shape. Effect, Distort and Transform, and then Transform. I'll turn Preview on. I want to make sure that it rotates around this point here so I've got nine little boxes here. I'm going to click on the middle bottom one that sets this as the rotation point. I want five copies because there are six to go around the circle here to be rotated around to make our shape and I've already got one, so I want five copies. Then I want my angle and it's 60 degrees and there we have our starting stars. I'm just going to click "Okay". That is the first piece of our pattern. We're going to come back in the next video and build up the other pieces. 4. Pt 3 - Complete the Rotations: At this point we have a single shape that has been rotated to create the star. I need to get hold of this shape hear. I'm going to need to expand this entire rotation. I'll choose object, expand appearance. That just breaks this group up into six individual groups. Now, I need to lock down everything except the group that I want to work with. I need to just decide which of the groups is the one that I need to work with. I'm just selecting on each of them in the last panel here to ascertain which is the one I want and the interlock everything else down. The only shape that can do anything right now because it's not locked down is this one here. I'm going to make sure that I click on it here in the last panel to select it. I don't want anything to upset the alignment here, so I'm going to do most of my selections for the layers panel just for safety. I'm going to choose effect, distort, and transform and then transform. I want to do the exact same transformation as I did last time, five copies, 60 degrees. But this time I want to transform around this point here, which out of these nine boxes is the bottom write one. That creates this star here. But this star and this star share that same point. So this pattern is perfect just by the way that we're creating it. I'll click okay. Next up in the last panel, I have to take this shape which is forming this star and expand it. Object, expand appearance. That breaks out these six points. I'm going to open up this group here that makes the six points here, and they're all here inside a group. If I open this up, you'll seen that this is a group itself. I am going to ungroup this group because I just want to get to one point. I'm going to choose object, ungroup. That's just keeping my layers panel here really neat and tidy. Now, somewhere in these selected objects is the next point that I want to work with and that's going to be this point here. I'm just going to successively turn them off until I found the won that I want. That's it there. Every other point I can just lock down. Now, I'm going to select this one again using the last pallet to make my selection. I'm going to make my final rotation effect, distort, and transform, transform, same deal as before. Five copies, 60 degree rotation. But this time we want this to be the middle and so we want to rotate around the top corner. That's going to be this point here. Now, we have a perfect starter for our patterns. I'm just going to click "Okay". But before I finish up here, I want to expand this group. Going to expand this into all these six shapes, object, expand, appearance. Then because this is in a group, I'm going to ungroup it, object, ungroup. Now, I have a last panel that is just full of these individual shapes, but they're all perfectly lined up. For now, I'm going two lock them all down so nun of them can move. Because the next step is to create a no fill, no stroke rectangle that is going to be the boundary for our pattern's watch. 5. Pt 4 - Make and Recolor the pattern: For the next step, I'm going to zoom tool and I want to zoom over this area of the design because that's going to be my final pattern swatch. I just want to be able to see things really, really clearly. I'm going to the rectangle tool. I'm going to select it and I'm going to hover here until I see the word anchor because that's going to be telling me I'm over the anchor point in the middle of that shape. I'm going to scroll out here until I snap into position over that anchor point. I'm just going to go down here until I snap into this anchor point and I'll let go. I'm going to set this as a no fill, no stroke rectangle. I'm going to double-check before I leave here that everything is in position by zooming in just a little bit more. There will be a snap here, so you'll know when you're in position by the fact that the marquee is going to snap into position, and you just want it to snap over these points. It's looking just fine to me. So I'm going to my Layers palette and I'm going to unlock all of these layers. I'm going to take the rectangle I just created, and I'm going to put it behind this group of shapes, that is my pattern. At this stage, if I wanted to, I could select this group and ungroup those objects. Just so everything is nice and simple for our pattern piece, I'm going to select everything on this layer. So that is all of these shapes plus the no fill, no stroke rectangle. Just going to zoom out of here and the no fill, no stroke rectangle is over this area here because that's the area that we determined was our pattern swatch. With the selection tool, I'm just going to drag and drop the whole thing into the Swatches panel. At this point, I'm going to select either the contents of this layer, and I'm just going to move them to one side just in case I need to work again on my pattern swatch, for any reason I don't want to lose it at this stage. I'm going to create a rectangle that is the size of the art board. I'm going to center it on my art board. So I'm going to select align to art board and I'm going to make sure it's centered on the art board. The fill is targeted over here, so all I need to do is just to click on my pattern to fill the shape with my pattern. Now I've got some fracture lines here running through my pattern. To get rid of those fracture lines, I can select my shape, choose Object, Transform, Scale. I want to disable transform objects. I want to choose a uniform scale, and I'll just scale my shape until those lines disappear. Because they're disappearing as I'm scaling my shape and they're sort of moving around, that means that their are fracture lines in the pattern and they not actually a problem with the pattern itself. This is just Illustrator thing. A little bit annoying. I'll just scale it until those fracture lines disappear and click "Okay". If you're concerned about them, you can also make them disappear by choosing Edit and Preferences, on a Mac that would be Illustrator and Preferences, go to the General tab and disable anti-aliasing artwork and click "Okay", and that will remove it, but it will also give you a sort of pixelated look to your pattern because the edges are not being anti-aliased or smooth out. I'm just going to undo that, so my pattern looks nice and smooth. You can re-color the pattern at this stage. So I'm going to the Re-color option. At this stage, I want to make the dark red black, and I want to turn the other colors into white. So I'm going to take this one and make it white. I'm going to take the pink and make it white. Just double-click on it and select white, and I'm going to the dark red here. I'm going to make it black and I'll click "Okay". That's one iteration of the pattern and you can say that because I've changed the colors, it's automatically appearing as an alternate pattern piece in the Swatches palette. Now I'm going to invert this and turn black into white and white into black. I'll click on "Re-color" again. I'm going to go to black and make it white. Now I'm going to click here "Opposite white", I'm going to add a color to the color harmony and then make that black. Now I have an inverse of my pattern, I'll click "Okay'. Now I have one version of black and white, a second version of black and white, and the original color version, and I could continue and make different versions of this pattern should I desire. So there's a way to create optical illusions 60s star pattern in Illustrator. Your project for this class is going to be to make this pattern yourself. Go ahead and make your foundation shape, then rotate it around, expand it so you can get a shape out of it, lock everything else down, and go and make your successive rotations and you'll need three rotations arranged like this to be able to get the piece out of the design that you need for your patterns swatch. Post a picture of your completed pattern in use as your class project. I hope that you've learned something in this video about looking at a pattern and being able to break it up and to work out how you're going to execute the pattern in Illustrator. As you're watching these videos, you will have seen a prompt which lets you recommend this class to others. Please, if you enjoyed the class, do two things for me. Firstly, give it a thumbs up and secondly, write in just a few words why you're enjoying the class. These recommendations help other students to say that this is a class that they too might enjoy. If you'd like to leave a comment or a question, please do so. I read and I respond to all of your comments and questions, and I look at and respond to all of your class projects. My name's Helen Bradley. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of graphic design for lunch, and I look forward to seeing you in an upcoming episode soon.