Quick and Easy Coordinates: Create a Pattern Collection

1. Intro: although there, I hope you're having a wonderful day. My name is Dolores Aspirin, and I'm an artist from Manitoba, Canada. I actually spend about 1/3 of the year traveling, and that's possible because I can work from wherever I am, as long as I've got art supplies and my laptop with me. So this class quick and easy coordinates is a follow up to my coral and sea life course. Towards the end of that class, I realized that this was an artwork that I really wanted to have as part of a collection. So you're going to see my process from start to finish, as I designed all of the patterns to go along with this made hero print. So we're going to design the coordinates, the secondary and the blender prints. I'm going to guide you through this whole process. One of the reasons that I decided to learn a little bit more about coordinates. With that, my agent said to me, You need to start designing in collections. So coming from a background of doing kind of single off artworks, I did extra large paintings for corporate locations. I have never been part of this whole pattern design world. I had to kind of stop in my tracks and figure out what exactly he meant. So that put me on a whole new journey of trying to think completely differently. So the concept is this. If you can present your artwork in a collection, it gives a client a lot more flexibility of what they can do. You're more likely to sell multiple patterns or artworks to a client if you present them uniformly in a collection. So this course will arm you with the knowledge of how to take your single artwork or hero pattern and flush it out into a fully fledged collection. This pattern making skill set has proven to be one of the most important ones that I have developed as an artist. I hope that will have you going back and taking a look at the artworks you already have and building collections around them. That's what I did. So this course is ideal for you. If you've already been working with design and you do have some illustrator experience, I'll show you as much as I can along the way. But if you don't have too much experience, you might want to go back to some of my other pattern making and brush making courses. Are you ready to get started? All right, let's get into it. 2. Lesson 1 Inspiration and Mood Board: Hi, guys. Welcome to lesson one. So, in this lesson, what we're gonna do is we're gonna take a look at that pattern that we designed in the last class, and then we're gonna talk about inspiration and how to create a mood board. Let's get to it. So let's discuss why we would make a mood board. For me, creating a mood board is a great way to jump start my creative process. I like to compare and collect everything in one place just to make it a little bit easier. It kind of helps me to establish a direction and saves me time. I often use it to help investigate and research a specific theme or style, and it helps me to work coat things like colors, games, the scale of the patterns, maybe the contrast, some of the complexity and other variables that I might not think of if I didn't have them right in front of me. So I wanted to quickly show you my any mood boards that I created I created to, and this one was mainly to just kind of solidify in my mind the difference inspiration that I had when I was making my pattern. I had created thes motifs that you saw if you were in my last course and these air a few of the pictures that I found to help me get inspired for doing the actual support, Prince. So this is similar to the one that I took at the Florida Aquarium. And one of the things I like about this one was the colors. And in this one, I just liked it because it showed a bunch of different undersea life all in one picture. These look like little sculptures that were made. And then these two, you know, just cause they were really similar to what I had created. And also because I liked some of these kind of color combinations that were created. So that inspired me to continue with my mood boards. And then I created this one. So the reason I collected thes examples and you can see here I still got my motifs at the top, and I've got the two versions of the color ways that I did at the end of that last course. Coral and sea life pattern design and Russia's course. And what I wanted to collect here waas different scales of patterns that could possibly use my blenders and my secondaries. So I've got I don't know, This one here reminded me of the bubbles that I have in the background. So I'm thinking of doing something like that. I like this one as well. For Bubbles. I like that the patterns a little bit more spread out and kind of has that terrazzo tile kind of a feel. I liked this the size of this particular teeth on this one, and I like the direction. So one directional print, But it's kind of cool how it's on the diagonal. And then this one I just threw in here to remind me of the different scales that I would be wanting to work with. So, you know, construct for your own mood board, do it in whatever way you think is gonna help. You usually print out my mood boards and have them either sitting right beside me or upon a wall nearby. And as I am working my way through a designing all of my coordinates, I check in with it once in a while just to see what my original plans had been. So one of the other things you can look at when you are at this stage is how other designers mix and match patterns and colors. My first stop interest. There are some great ideas here, and I particularly like things like this that show a mood board. You can see quite a variety of Prince here that have been put together for this particular mood board. Maybe this is a government mood board, who knows? But the idea is still the same. Sure, let's go back to that page. Look it down here. Tons of great ideas on mixing and putting together patterns. I would suggest that this is a good way to get started on trying to come up with ideas and on Brown's putting together that mood board. So in the next lesson, what we're gonna do is take a look a little bit closer at meaning of and the purpose for us designing all of the's support prints that are going to go along with our pattern. So I'll see you in the next lesson 3. Lesson 2 Why Design in Collections: Hi, guys. Welcome to lesson to you this lesson. I want to talk to you a little bit more about why it is important to design in collections , going to go over in point form first and then I'll expand on that pretty in collections gives added value to your designs, and it shows that you really have an understanding of the industry. It creates a mood, and it really contributes to the brand. It attracts buyers also into looking at multiple designs. So instead of selling just one, you may sell multiples. So in that way it provides a lot more auctions for the buyers, and it really has them thinking. And then last but not least, it definitely has you competing with other artists who are also designing surface patterns . So let's just take a really good look at all of these a good way for you to find reference . What I did myself is just typed in to my browser. Why design surface patterns in collections? And as soon as I hit on the images, this is what came up on my screen, and first conclusion I came to is that it just looks so good. It just gives you so many more ideas when you see the whole collection, more ideas about what you could do with it, and I'm sure it works the same way for the client. It would definitely helped, um, think about it and have more ideas. In my experience, this happened to me with the rest, the gift manufacturer that I was working for on contract a few years back. I would submit the artwork in the collection and they would come up with some really great ideas on what to use them on. They might have decided on one particular artwork or, let's say, a notebook, and then they would take some of the coordinating patterns and make other items to put into the line. Everything went together really great, but they were all completely different patterns. It was a really eye opening experience for me. In another instance, they took just an isolated watercolor and put it on the front of little note pads and coffee cups. So that was pretty cool. Seeing how they envision the use of my artwork in ways I hadn't even thought off, they also put them on the front of really cool bookmarks and a little purse hanger. And, you know, it's really cool to look at this information here and see all the reference that you confined on. Why to create in collections. I just hopped over to this lady's site, Denise, and she's got information field log with all kinds of stuff that you can read about and including why you want to create collections of those a ton of information out there. And I found that every earnest, whose process that I read up on had kind of a different way of approaching it. And maybe one of those will end up being your fit. Not necessarily that you will do it exactly like a particular artist, but learning a little bit from each of them. You see some insight into why your collections were so successful and they can be wildly different. So I may suggest a certain thing, and it just doesn't feel right for you. Check out these other artists so that another thing I did was I went Teoh creative market because I know that this girl here, you and I graphics designs absolutely amazing collections and presents them so beautifully You could go through this tour screenshots here and see so many different applications for the actual patterns that she created in this particular collection. Just gorgeous. It gives you so many ideas. This is the collection here, this is another part of it. And then 1/3 page of it. So there is a ton here and then, you know, like I said, you go back and you take a look at the different mock ups that she created. And you could imagine when you have this kind of stuff on display at a show that the clients, especially if they are going to be manufacturing, are gonna get a ton of ideas for stuff that they can have manufactured and sell to give shops and so forth. Let's just go to her, and I'll show you another one that I really light that it took a look at. There's a lot of work here that's new, and I love this one just lovely. So stunning. And I love that. It's all created in such a monotone color palette, and again you could see that she's got a lot of different kind of prints. Blender prints, secretary prints, different scales in her prints, a terrific theme. These are all things that we're going to discuss as we work our way through my class. And I think I may come back to this one because it's just such a great example off some of the stuff that I want to talk to you about. So this is why it is so important to designing collections. I think the main points for me are definitely more opportunities for you, because the client has so much more to work with and just the fact that it could attract more clients. They may not necessarily have a product in mind at the beginning, but they can look through your stuff and it gives them an idea. And that's exactly like I said, what happened with Russ? And then they would find a manufacturer, Teoh produce whatever the idea was that they had from my artwork collection. The other thing, I think, is that mockups air just so fun to work with. I love working with them at the end and just seeing what my patterns and my collection look like on a multiple of products. I definitely plan a showing you that at the end, and you know finding actual walk ups to use. It's becoming easier and easier. 15 years ago, when I was first doing this kind of work, I really had a hard time finding them. I basically had to make whatever, like cause you show off my product And the mock ups weren't as well thought out and easy to work with as they are now. I have bought from here from creative Market I bought for a mock up world creative fabrica . I mean, there's so many I can't even think of them all. In one of my other classes, I covered a site called Place It where You Can Go In and just put In Your were on a single mock up if you want and just pay for that single market. Or you can pay for a subscription where you couldn't download and unlimited amount of mock ups. And really, if push comes to shove and you have to make your own, it's not that hard. So maybe if I can, I'll cover that at the end of this class as well. So when you are designing your collection, I would say aim for that one hero print for sure with probably two or three supporting coordinates. So patterns that could be used in a way as a hero. But they're definitely secondary to your main hero. Print, on average, somewhere between six and 10. Supporting patterns, secondary patterns or blenders, whatever you want to call them. So we're gonna go through all of this in this class. Hang in there and I will reveal as much as I can about what I know. All right. So catching in that next lesson, see you there. 4. Lesson 3 Designing Coordinates: Hey, guys, welcome to less than three. Talk a little bit about cord. It's alright. So coordinates or patterns that could stand alone but actually worked with your hero pattern. Let's take a look at how that works. We'll go over it in point form first, and then I will get into the explanation. So what exactly are coordinate patterns? Hornets air patterns that complement and don't compete with the hero pattern. They often have a common yet reduced color palette, and they sometimes use common motifs from within the hero pattern. They have the same theme or style, and they could stand alone but still work well with the hero. So this one was my originals. Watch that I created. This would be what I would consider to be my hero pattern. Definitely what I would consider a hero pattern by definition. And I'm gonna show you here a couple of the secondary patterns that I was playing with. I'll remind you a little bit about some of the things that I said Teoh, look for to strive for when you're creating your secondary patterns and this one here, I would consider a coordinate that could definitely stand on its own, if necessary, can see that it's got less of the motifs than I have in this one here. So I've reduced probably from 20 or so icons down. Teoh. No, maybe six here, six different ones in some cases. This one, for example, this light grey Horrell tree here. I actually just flipped and justice sections of it, this kind of golden colored one over here. Same thing. It's a version of it a little bit less detail, eliminated a few of the branches or have added branches in a different way. You can see some of my little show motifs in the background here, but you can definitely tell is comparing the two here that there are a lot last colors going on and definitely way lasts motifs in total. So the two things that I suggested as ways to create that coordinate we're reducing the color palette and reducing the number of motifs, so that's worked out really well. It's not to say that let's say this one here. I couldn't also use it somewhat like this, with one of the colors that we've drawn from the pattern or from our reduced color palette , and it's now the background color actually really like that. And like these kind of outline motifs that I let your I rest a little bit, a little bit more negative space. I think that helps the I to rest a little bit. You could imagine these together. I haven't really played too much with the scale here. You can see that it's a reduced scale. I could play with that more. So what I would do is look on this square that has the pattern in it and going to transform each about a shortcut for that man auction shift D. Because I use it fairly often. Make sure that you have just transformed pattern selected here, and then you can play with your scaling. Let's try it in a boat. She 85% 84. So it's something like that. She has another possibility. I'm not going to apply that yet because I haven't really made decisions about scale yet. So that's one of the ideas that I had the other one reminds me of. Remember that one from the mood board that was kind of a directional print, and I like that. I think this would be really awesome alternative here as coordinate for this one here. Lets fill it and you can see that we still have a little bit of work to do on that pattern . So that's something I will dio coming up. But you can see how nicely that would work again. Imagine that on different colored backgrounds may be with these jellyfish having a white background or the opposite. You could have the jelly fish and the bubbles white on a solid background. So those are all things that I will experiment with at some point. But you can see how coordinates actually work together in a collection. So this was really my main vinyl kind of yours Watches based on this design here. And I took some of these and then used them to produce these other options. So I didn't take all of them. I would take some of them and I would produce a difference color palette for that particular swatch. Now, here's another one that I thought was really interesting. Like took notes from you and I graphics. I kind of got this idea when I looked at this one earlier today and you can see here like I said. It's very monochromatic, and what I did notice is that she's got some of her motives here filled so that they can overlap over other ones. Those are a couple of the things that I kept in mind when I went and worked on this particular swatch, and I like the way it works is a pattern down, a little bit of experimenting. So let's see. Got my rectangle tool option. Click 10 by 10. Click OK, and I'm going Teoh. Fill it with pattern and you can see here. Let's just do the same thing and reduce the scale and let's copy this rectangle and pay sitting back. Manby. Pace it exactly in the back. Take out that pattern and let's put in just a light, very light version of one of our colors. I'm gonna go boat that, and that is another very pretty kind of on auction. I'm going to try this again because I don't think I did the right settings in here by column. That's 1/2 dropped 10 by 10 inch. And remember that in here you can change the overlap. So the way that the items overlap, which could be important when you're doing this kind of a white feel and you want it, Teoh cover something behind it. So I may have to go in and change this one the order or the feel on this one here because changing it here is not making any difference. I want that to be behind, but nonetheless, we can check out our repeat. So I'll escape out of that and let me try that again. So that's my correct feel or my correct repeat. So you can see that has the bones of a very nice coordinate as well. And I've just done it on a really light background. It could actually be pretty cruel on a really dark background as well. So let me locate that. So this rectangle here is the color less just really quickly do one little quick experiment with a darker color. A. Select it by clicking on this farthest right cola, and I know that that's the rectangle, and it's behind everything because I've pulled it down in this layer stack and let's just check it out, too. You mean that could be kind of fun. So, you know, a completely different look, depending on what you put in as a background color. So I actually quite like that. That might have me doing a little bit more experimenting. And I can see here on my pattern that I've got some things I would want to adjust. I don't like this little area of space here, and there may be a few other little things that I do, but overall, I'm actually very pleased with that one. So I'm at the point where I'm ready to experiment a little bit and show you a couple of more options. And I want to definitely show you these little blender prints that I have played around with off camera. This one, um, based on the water drops, and then this one based on that one. Very you metric, symmetrical kind of coral. So I think in the next lesson, we're going to talk a little bit more about, I guess, probably more about just coordinates. And then what? A little bit of extra time spent on blenders. And then I want to go through and definitely show you adjusting my patterns and protecting them. So I will see you in the next lesson. 5. Lesson 4 Secondary and Blender Prints: Hi, guys. Welcome to lessen. For in this lesson, we're gonna take a look at secondary and blender prints. So as a designer, designing coordinates and secondary prints and blender prints is part of the essential skill set you need as a surface pattern designer. So in review, we know that coordinate designs as those that go with or complement the main design, but don't compete with it. These usually share some, but not all, of the colors and motifs we discussed playing with the distribution of color and using those motifs from the main design to tie everything together. The secondary prints are intended to be used with the main design as part of a range, so this should be similar in theme and style. But they're still able to stand alone as well. Good secondary prints might go with several of your collections. Even though these are separate designs, they really need to work with that heroes in general, I really recommend starting the initial process with the hero that has a plethora of blue cheese. Once you've established that particular pattern, add your secondary recorded by drawing from these motifs, and then it's time to work on your blenders for the blender, sometimes used doodle marks like polka dots or lines, or I'll use a couple of smaller motifs from the main pattern. Other ideas for secondary hands might include forget contrast from the toss to an all over print. It's good to interview different types, like maybe a geometric or one directional print. Two or three blenders are a good idea, and remember, these should always have a reduced color palette. The blenders helped to blend it all together really simple there, usually a smaller scale and maybe look at your hero for something small. In my case, it was the bubble. Maybe another possibility would be to repeat exactly the same pattern, but make it a little bit different, like dark on light or light on dark. Let's take a look at some of the ones that I've done, and I'm gonna try to break it down a little bit more for you already. So off camera. I did a little bit more adjusting on this pattern here, and they want to just talk to you a little bit about the different types of patterns that I have going on here just so we can review a little bit. So this top pattern here is again a toss pattern, very much like the original. This one here is more of a directional and great kind of a pattern. Show you that with the pattern. Repeat how that works. So I'm gonna go into the pattern options and you can see here got great and chosen as my type of pattern birth child. And then here I'm gonna type in my 10 by 10. No, I commonly used this when I'm doing a course just to make it easier for we bring everything else. And you can see here that the repeat is very good. Like, let me hide the art boards and you can see that that works out really nicely or directional and yet very much in a great formation. So that noose Watch has been at it and ISS on getting rid of all the previous versions of that particular pattern. Repeat. So we've got a toss prince, which is 1/2 drop. Repeat, we've got a nice grid pattern, which is directional. This pattern here is absolutely geometrical. You can see that very easily and then just click with you a pattern repeat on match that one again. I have specified as a grid type ill, and she lets just type in permission. It's you know, that works, so you can see here that that is an absolutely symmetrical pattern. But can you see here? There's kind of a band of white space between my tiles, so I can either go in and change the actual pile on my board or I could change the settings here. I personally prefer to change it here on my tile because then it remains consistent to what I've done on all of my other times. Is that 10 by 10 tile? Repeat. So I am going to just enlarge it. And I know personally from experience that what I want to do is accuse, like this kind of design. Have the very top of the icons or motifs line up to the very top of the head by tan tile. And then this pointed bottom lines up to the all of the child. And on both sides, you can see it's just directly bisecting the shape completely. So let's give that one a test run 10 by 10 and no, I can see it looks perfect. Here's another Russian for us. Hey, so I am actually going to get rid of this role here. It's I saw that it was stumbling up there, and I know that this is another pattern auction or had a repeat that will be useful for making my blender prints. And I haven't skilled us again. It's still at 100% and I haven't even played with Skeel and really not much with color, and we'll do a little bit of experimenting with that in a minute. So on this one over here, I also did just a very geometric kind of a group pattern. And again, I've got whatever's on my talk show repeated on the bottom. But I was on the left, repeated on the right. I moved that little character down. That means this one has the adjusted, and I always use my move tool to do that. So if I'm on my direct select press move, which is a return on my keyboard, horizontal move 10 inches to the right, nothing vertically coffee. And then now I know that this one and this one are identically places correct in their positioning. Now, this one here I won't explain a little bit of both. So it's just I'm calling this one bubbles. You could see that. I use those bubbles here with my jellyfish. And I actually created a brushy that. So I'll show you that Russia real quick. I created this brush here, and I'm gonna drag it out so that you can take a look at what I've done. So you can see here that this is just a bunch of dots and you can see that they're all expanded shapes at this point, and I created those just using is one of these regular round brushes, maybe combination. I don't remember. But once I had the color that I wanted selected, which was this late room, all I had to do was touch the brush to my screen but my image area and create the dots. You know, that told you this before. But right and left brackets will enlarge or reduce. Once I had all of them drawn and arranged the way I wanted them, I dragged them into Russia's panel, created art brush, changed the directional hold to be upper down, left it at the fixed size and under changes to tense for this one. But I can see this possibly being in white. So I'm changing it to tense right now. Actually, I should have really drawn this in black and white much. It's fine for now. So I was gonna leave it. I'm gonna delete that, and then you can see over here. That was my original drawing of the dots. And then here you can see that that was just a brushstroke. So demonstrate that pulling gives me this whole clump of bubbles. Okay, show it to you. An outline mode. And you can see here are those original rest strokes. Before I made them into one week, brush that group, um, than I had made the brush. And then these are paths that particular brush went on to create the bubbles for each of those. So then when I waas creating blender prints, I actually did the same thing. I took this. That one brush dragged it out like I showed you just a minute ago, and I think I end up with corner of it, filled the corner, and then I repeated it across the art board, and then I did a bit of filling with other sizes of dots. And when it's this one to be quite random looking and originally when I just copied the brush strokes, you can actually see bands. And I got rid of that so that it's a really nice, just kind of all over French hate. So we've discussed all of these different pattern tiles that I created. This would probably not be enough for an entire collection, but I think that we've got enough examples here. You've got the idea of how I go about creating them and how quickly really were. After all, this class is about creating quick headed repeats, and these were very quick because these were brushes I already had. So all of these, I mean, in total I spent probably on our house, creating my patterns and just kind of ironing out all the problems with the repeats. But in the big picture, that's really not too much time. It took me more than a day to produce that original. So relation you could see here I've created six. In the amount of time that it had taken me to Dio my original hero print, there would still be a lot more work to do to really flush out my collection. But at this point, we've got enough. Teoh, continue with the class and talk a little bit more about some of the other factors that we need to. So I will see you in the next lesson. We're gonna talk about contrast, complexity and scale and how these will factor into our choices. See there. 6. Lesson 5 Scale, Complexity and Contrast: Hi guys. Welcome to less than five. So we've made a few choices about what we want to include in our collection, and I think we should talk about what works best in the way of complexity, scale and contrasts. So why do we consider complexity scale? In contrast, when we're designing our collections well, having a variety of scales gives the collection a really appealing look. Variety also gives the end users of the pattern multiple options. The same reasoning applies to complexity. I like to think of it in terms of accompaniment and not competition. I recommend that you create coordinates that offer a sense of contrast or a sense of harmony. Ideally, you'll have a nice balance between vocal prints, medium prints and small coordinates, so this could be done with complexity as well a scale and color contrast. So that's what we're gonna do in this next segment. Here. I'm gonna show you what I did to accomplish these goals. So what did off camera is go through and makes watches here at the top, showing my different pattern designs so you can see the whole variety here, and we're gonna talk a little bit more about some of things that I've done here right before we started. Think what I'll do, though, is select all of my unused watches and get rid of them because I know I had duplicates of some. And you can see the parents watches air here at the talks about 1234567 eight. At the moment to here, I'm showing tens. You can probably see. I've got a couple of repeats here, and I've done that for a reason because what we're going to do now is do a little bit of experimenting with the scale. So I happened to alter the scale on any of them, except for this one here, the just grid pattern of shells. And I was thinking with this, the one that's repeated here, I would experiment a little bit with how this would look principle in different colors and second of all, with the scale quite reduced so otherwise, I was thinking that I would need for would like to have on alternate with the motifs being white and having it on a colored background. So we'll just duplicate this pattern here, over, down low but lower. I'm gonna take the white stroke off, and I'm going to fill this with white and not really sure what I want for this stroke. So I might just put on very light color. Maybe this, actually, maybe this neutral one here. Okay, so we thought it ultimate here. That's make pattern out of it. We know it's a grid 10 by 10. It okay, and that's been added up. Here you are swatches. So I'll escape out of here and just go up and and feel that with our alternate pattern, better pick the bill. Come home. So, in my opinion, that really looks quite different than this, and we still haven't even played with the scale. So I took this one, these shells back to their original scale. And now what I want to do is just get rid of all these extra swatches. So I know that I've got all of my corrects watches in here, so I'm going to do select all unused, and that shows you all the multiples up here that I had as I was developing my pattern. And I'm just gonna hit the leech. I've got all of my swatches now as the proper swatches, so there should be just one of each. Okay, so now I think we're ready to start playing a little bit with the scale and a few of the other factors that we talked to Goat. What do you think we should do? First? I'm thinking I want to play with this one, I think, and reduce its scale. So I'm going to do my command auction shift. The shortcut can make sure that this is on just transformed patterns and ticket preview hands. Let's scale it back. No, I'm thinking 50 50. So I'm just fast for me to type it in. Once you are in that 1st 1 and you type in your percentage, hit the tab key and you'll get into your second little box here and click. Okay. All right. So, you know, in relation to the rest of it here, that scale is quite nice and quite small. And yes, I'll leave that one. For now. Let's try anything with scale of this one as well. So I'm gonna just duplicate it because I think that original scale is great. A swell. And this one I want also experiment with putting it on a dark background. So I'm gonna copy that square faced in back, which is a command. Be short cat. I'm on the back most square at the moment, and I want to do that one really dark. And that's cool. High like that, you know, in relation to the rest of this here is definitely contrast ing. Definitely quite different to definitely work with any of these coordinates from a little bit later. Yeah, maybe something like that. I like that. So I haven't changed the scale. All I've done is the background color. So let's also let's bring this up a little bit bigger and let's play with the scale. So de, select that back square. Select the front one and command option ship the now. I didn't want to actually go smaller on this one. I want to go a little bit bigger, so I'm going to try 150 hit preview and I like that. See how it's kind of brought it up to the size of some of these in the background over here . So click OK on that one, and we've got another alternate. So what are we getting up to here? 2468 10 11. So we're getting really close to having what I would consider a collection. So I'm going to also duplicate this one and bring it up here. Should have my smart guides on command you for my smart guides. And now I can see I'm lining it up properly. And this one definitely want change the scale to be smaller. So I'm gonna try 50 preview it and you can see that that would be a good old fernet skill wise was trying in smaller Let's try already and that's nice. It's kind of subtle can even make it more settled by basting Square in behind and filling it with a really low contrast kind of, ah, background color. It's trying out all of these to see what I like. I think this is a great that that was the actual color. One of things I've done before to is taken and duplicated this watch Ah, here and then creative, even lighter or darker version of that. You have kind of, ah, often of the same color in the background, so that kind of works to not sure what's happening here, but it looks like my might be a little bit space incorrectly. Those are things that I would go back and check and double check that all of my parents watches were working correctly. So I think we have a really good right here in scale, in complexity. And in contrast, we could probably do two or three others. Just based on what we've got here is guy here. Let's do a quick alternate color background copy, paste in back, feel with a different color. And you know what I think I might do is go back. And to make this whole parents watch white so I'd have white jellyfish instead. And then I would do an alternate color. And then the other one, I thought off. Let's try. We've got this one here on a white background on a light background. We haven't changed the scale. Let's try doing this one. Actually, I think I had a rectangle there today. I was rectangle here. Let's select that one, and we'll do that one in one of the darker tones, maybe, and I also want to change the scale on that one. So command option ship D again and try that one at 50 50 one wrong. I want the I was on playing background color. What I need to be. It's on the pattern. Try 65 I should try more like 75. That's too close. Okay, like that. And let's take a look this up close. And I think what I could do is go back to that original swatches well, and make some changes has. Now, I don't like the way this particular area looks, but it shows you how quickly and easily I could actually do that to create even more alternates. So I've got a pretty well rounded out collection here, so I think we're ready to move on into the next lesson. And in that next lesson, what we're gonna do is discuss theme in style and watch. Factors and considerations should be taken into account when you're setting out to create your pattern collection. All right. I'll see you in that next. Nothing 7. Lesson 6 Understanding Theme and Style: in this lesson, we're going to talk about the theme of our pattern and how that works with creating an overall style. All right, let's get started. So why is it important for us to develop theme or style when we're working on our collections? Well, for me, the theme helps drive my design decisions. The theme helps me to narrow down my overall subject matter, and it helps me for making decisions about style. Style helps me to develop the content for my collection decisions about style than eventually lead us towards discovering our own signature style, and then once we have discovered that it becomes part of our browned. So all in all, it's a win win situation. So earlier we talked about mood boards, and I just want to reiterate they are just so very important. When you're doing your initial design with the mood board, you can really capture the kind of mood or theme that you're after. OK, take a look at some of these as I scroll through. I just did a simple search for mood boards for surface pattern design, and I've seen some beautiful ones here. The nice thing about them is they're not there to necessarily help you create the initial patterns themselves per se. But they're there to just give you that feeling or that mood. So when it comes to the theme, the theme is the overall subject for the design. So, for example, your theme could be a holiday or Christmas design. Or it could be a unicorn inspired nursery or baby room design. Or it could be something like an underwater theme or, in my case, the sea life or under the sea life. So when you're trying to choose your theme, think about the tone that you want to convey. What is the feeling that you're after? Is there a story to be told? Do you want the pattern to be really simple and childlike, like some of these very sweet, very lovable kind of designs? Or are you looking for something really sophisticatedly classy? Maybe like one of these, this page brings into perfect focus. The whole idea of scale doesn't. And then what is that mood? What is the mood that you're after? Are you possibly after kind of a retro leam? Taking a look at some of these? You can see there's definitely I've been just kind of a feeling happening and look at the colors. The colors just create a certain mood, don't they? The other thing to keep in mind is, how are people going to be using the design? Are they going to use it for Fabray? Are they going to use it for wallpaper? Are they going to use it for gifts for gift wrap, paper goods? Or are they going to use it for apparel? That's one of the things that you have to ask yourself as you're creating your collection. Are you aiming for the fabric market? Are you aiming for the paper goods market? Are you looking Teoh appeal to designers that are in charge of helping people choose interior products maybe like wallpaper for a nursery or upholstery fabric for really classy interior, It helps for you to imagine what it's gonna look like when it's completed and how it's going to be used. As I look through a board like this, or a group of images like this, it makes me want to really rethink my whole sense of purpose. When I was designing my coral and sea life pattern mean things would be so exciting to design for the wallpaper and interior. It's kind of a market. I hadn't even considered that before. I guess that's just another one of those things that I'm gonna have to you on the back burner and think boat at some other point in life. So just think about the in style as you're about to design your collection or even at this point now, when you're trying to put together the whole selection with your co ordinates secondary and blender prints. All right, so in our next segment, that's exactly what we're gonna dio. We're going to focus on actually choosing the content for our collection. Okay, so I'll see you there. 8. Lesson 7 Choosing Content for Collection: guys book Lesson seven. So we've done a lot of work, and I think now we should talk about what we need to do to make choices about what's gonna go into our collection. All right, so let's go over it in point form first. So choosing the content, my rule of thumb is to offer as many options as possible. I like to vary the scale, contrast the complexity just like we discussed in the previous lessons. And I want to make sure that all the patterns kind of speak to the same theme. So everything has to make sense. Stylistically, as first choices go, I also make sure that I test all of the patterns alone, and it's part of the whole collection that helps to inform my choices. And then right away I create cell sheets to help me stay organized, and Teoh kind of be the final check for me. My cell sheets always include mark ups, and so creating the mock ups and then putting them on the cell sheets, I think help me to make those final decisions. And honestly, there have been times when right at the very end. But I'm making up that sell sheet. I actually make some changes to my collection. So let's go through and try a few tests and see how I actually come to final choices on my collection. All right, so here we are, back in my document, and you can see here that I've got a bunch of my patterns this kind of laid out here. And I like doing this and doing it all in one document so I can get a really sort of, ah sense of what the whole collection could look like. As you can see up here, I've done a couple of new ones and let's just take a look at those. So remember I talked about in the last lesson doing a white version of my jellyfish, and I've taken that and experimental a couple different colors, and I really like how it's looking. It'll it'll work well as an ultra niche. Now, my last one here I did what I wanted was something that just kind of give the illusion of waves or water. I didn't have anything like Batch, and I thought that would be just kind of an obvious thing that I would need or should have , So you can see here. I had kind of a problem with the fitting here in the middle. See, that repeat is touching. So I need a slight adjustment over here, Just kind of reduced the wit. And let's make this one into a pattern and see if that solves the problem. So let's check that one out. And, yes, that works a lot better than so, like, you eliminate all of this stuff over here. Come with my rectangle in the background and it's gone. So now we really do have a lot to choose from. And I just wanted Teoh talk to you a little bit about my process. Sometimes I even have more than this. What I have here. 2468 10 12 14 16. So that's way too many for a full collection. I would want to eliminate probably at least four of these, and I wanted to talk to you a little bit about how I go about making that decision. One of things that I asked myself when I'm looking at this is does this look like a really cohesive collection? And I believe it does. I have a common color palettes. I have used a lot of the motives and ultimate pattern. I have changed the way I'm using the colors. I yes, that's what I have the same colors working throughout. I really try when I'm doing this to keep everything right. Flexible. So I've also experimented on and off camera with background colors, as you saw now, another thing that I have done in the past that has really affected my whole process and it probably has happened to you is using the re color tool. And sometimes at this stage, what I'll do is I'll take a couple of the patterns and just experiment with them, using the re color tool to see if I've buying something that I really prefer. The other thing you know, as we talked about earlier, is I'm always considering the scale, and the contrast of the scale gives also a contrast that color gifts. So I think I've bought a little bit of everything going on here, but different scales. I've got different colors, and I also tried Teoh, when I'm at this stage, decide whether or not I have created kind of a harmony with my different choices or with my different backgrounds I've created. And what I mean by that is that I've got a few patterns here that I would consider to be really something that gives you kind of a mental break when you look at it. So patterns like the bubbles here and this new waves one that I've created, they just give your eye a bit of arrest. So imagine having this as a collection that would be used in a quilt, for example, and imagine how you would use those in a quilt. So one of the things I have is this little tester document that I use, So I'm gonna show you how that works. So in the next lesson, I think I'll do a little bit of batch, do some of the work off camera, and then you can also help me choose that final final selection. All right, so I will see when the next lesson 9. Lesson 8 Tester Quilt Squares: in this lesson. We're gonna talk about this little tester document. So this is that little document. And what this does is kind of simulates what it's like when you're choosing squares to put together in a quilt. Very piece it quilt. So what I do is I grab all of my hatters and what this does when I copy this over and paste it in this document, I'm going to actually my swatches here so you can see what happens. Okay, so I'm gonna paste it here. And you could see that my swatches here, my patterns, watches have been added and any of the colors that I've used So I am going to just reduce this down and just have this off to the side. It's they're so that I can work with these watches in this area. So let's just give this a little bit of a test run. I'm gonna save because I just heard my processor fan. Come on. And I know that that means that I'm pushing my computer and illustrator. I'm not just a kind of stuff going on here, and I don't want to take a chest of actually losing anything, right So let's think about what we would do here. Let's do a diagonal and fill it with our main pattern is here right now it's showing through Toothy would underneath. So I'm going to copy those squares, use the man, be which paste them in the back, and I'm gonna feel those with my darkest color. Also, I need to adjust the scale here. So what I would do is command option. Shifty just might transform each command and I'm going to it preview here. And then let's try this at a bulge. 30% took on that preview again and you can see that my squares or transform now, right now what it's doing is it's taking because I've got these three selected and I filled them at the same time. It's taking my pattern, and it has applied it across all of these selections. So what? I probably would dio and hit OK here, and I'm going to actually select and do these separately. And that was this guy, this guy, and I'm gonna do each of these individually notice that when I have whatever my settings already here is going to apply it automatically on my next election. So I've caught, Let's say, a diagonal on a quilt designed with that being my main pattern burnout with So let's now as a bit of ah, visual break fly one of these other swatches. Try these guys again. I'm gonna copy the square. Getting back. Using command, being I'm going to feel that one with kind of a light beige color again. Command option. Shifty has me transforming each of these squares individually. But get a coffee face in front and fill it with the background color. And then same thing. Copy it, piece in front. And this time I'm going to fill it with one of my patterns in and command option shifty. That gives me the transformation on that particular pattern. Okay, so you see the process here. And if you were to look in your layers, you could see everything that we've done here. So if I wanted Teoh possibly change background bond, that kind of a base square, I would grab those who bish Where if you see how I am clicking on this farthest right column holding my shift key and then going back and changing that feel color and not grab the rate one. Nothing I could do is I'm gonna log a sweat background, and I'm going to select both of thes. I'm gonna cut them. So Commander Control X and then make a new layer of peace and fronts that peace in exactly the right position. And then now I can select the correct rectangle, which is the background. I'm going to change it. Okay, I think actually wouldn't put this one at White, maybe even a slight gray background like the way better. So this is strictly for testing. You might not be a bad thing that you could include with cell sheets or samples that you're showing, but let's just proceed through and had a couple more of our patterns here. Actually, I'm gonna make that that speech background, and then I'm gonna copy it, paste it in front, and then that's the one that I will feel with my pattern that I picked this one and command auction 50 and that changes the scale. Then for this, I might I'm gonna copy this down to this one. He still in actually making you layer f pace in front and then that's the one that I'm going to fill with my original mean pattern. This time I've got it in the lighter. Maybe I'll do this one. I'm gonna do this one. Don't mind me as I changed my mind 15 times at those I've ordered this layer and taste, okay? And I'm gonna feel goes in this yellow and the lighter version pumping it pace in front and put in this one here so you can see how fun this would be if you were actually creating a quilt. And what kind of things you'd want to dio in the way of colors. So I find that this helps inform my decision on my collection. So then I go back and I choose sometimes based on this and sometimes other factors, but actually put a background in this one. We're with me for one second or have copied and then I'm going Teoh, give it that background color instead of the pattern feel. And then I'm gonna paced in front, then met auction shifty and I've got my reduced size here. Usually when I do is I put all these into their own layers. So this layer would be that full set of squares. This will be this full set of squares and so on. And then that way I can also select my backgrounds much more easily and experiment with this numerous times before I come to my decision. I just thought that this would be a really interesting way for you to be able to visualize . And I'm going Teoh, include this in my lesson materials. That way you can do this kind of checking as well. Now the other way that I often do it is I will make my sort of tentative final choice. And then I'll go through an experiment a little bit with other kinds of moccasins that I'm not just experimenting on quilts, possibly trying it on, Let's say stationery items or interior rooms like bedrooms, for example. So in the next lesson, I think I'll do. Ah, little bit of that. I'm gonna do some of the work off camera, so I will see when the next lesson bye for now. 10. Lesson 9 Preparing Swatches for Export: Okay, so we're ready to export our swatches so that we can use them for making our mock ups. So the first thing I did was copied them all from that other document and paste them a here . You can see that thesis watches have been added. I'm gonna do here in my swatches palette is or that fly out menu and select all of the unused watches and delete. And so you can see here that I've got a color group and I got a pattern group. What I generally do is I make a new group and I call that color group and then I take and grab all my color swatches. I'm holding down my command key so that I could select just the color swatches, and I dragged them into this group. Now what I need to do is individually take these patterns, dragged them out onto the art bore and make them into Venice watches. I need a use of force shop, so I'm going to demonstrate that. So I'm going to just move these out of the way up here, and then one by one, I'm going to drag out my different patterns. So you can see that if I select got particular pattern, it's all grouped. So now what I need to do is make a clipping mask for each of my patterns. And in the cases of those that have a colored background, I have to actually make a rectangle with the color as well. So I'm going to do that right now. Break down the steps that I take, and it mainly requires use of the layers panel. So I'm going to drag my layers panel out. I'm going to actually add my layers there, pull up my brushes and just get rid of that. Well, pretty much. All I'm working with now is going to be my layers palette. So I click on the 1st 1 and I can see it here in my layers palette. When I want to do is select that back most rectangle. And I mean, I know technically it's a square, but strong with the rectangle tool. So my habit is to call it a rectangle. I'm gonna copy it. So I got it selected. I'm going to copy it and paste it in front. I want to place it in front of the pattern So these three off looking like this. So you see here in my layers palette that these three are the ones that I am gonna be working on because you make a new layer cut from the original, go to that new layer and pace in front. So now this layer on Lee has my dark square. I'll often go through and name these as I go along to coordinate or correspond with my numbering protocol. Slight all. And I go to object clipping, mask and make so you can see that Command seven was the shortcut for that. And I'm just gonna go ahead and do that for all of my different swatches. I'll do that off camera and I'll meet you back here in a bit. Okay, so I'm gonna demonstrate putting one of these together in my final tile. Gonna grab this one because it's our hero. Copy it. And I've got this document that I call Final Swatch Blank Document one. So in here, the only thing I have is currently this 1 10 by 10 clipping mask that I have actually on this document when I start, this particular document is one that I use all the time and I'm gonna explain why in a minute. So I paste in my pattern and you can see that it's above the clipping mask over here. So I'm gonna get below it. And then I'm also going to make a 10 by 10 colored square. Well, 10 by 10. Okay, I'm going to make sure that that's aligned to New York board. So what I've got here is like a sandwich and the bottom most layer has to be background. So I'm gonna color that with my dark color Swatch watches I imported. So I went into my original documents. That's when I think Yeah, and I went to save this watch library as AI and I saved that into my assets folder for this class. And then when I was in this document, I went to open this watch library and to go to other library than I was able to find this coral. Pretty. So if I went and did that for you, I could show you it's not gonna be in my regularly sets here. My brush presets and pattern presets for illustrator. I saved it here into my quick coordinates course mile as coral pretties patterns. Watch Click on that and open ever done it. So I won't do it again. OK, so now we've got this delicious sandwich of clipping, mask pattern and background color. So now all I need to do is select all here. You could do that just with command A Or you could select it in the layers panel by clicking on the far most. Call him here and let's redefine our pattern. We know that it waas 1/2 drop and 10 by 10. This should help Perfect. And indeed it does. So now I can escape. And let's just test that powder. I'm gonna make a really big square vet. Make sure I'm on feel that. Ah, here we go. And that's our first main pattern. And basically, that's the steps I go through for all of them. So it's gonna explain to you a little bit about that document, and this will be how we go about doing it. If I was actually adding this to my roster of patterns, So I go to Boulder where I've got that document. So this is the document that we're working on right now. Finals watch blank document one. Normally at this point, what I would do is name this with my naming protocol, and then I would go ahead and duplicate this. I would have done this actually before making that's watch. I don't think I've seen. So I'm gonna duplicate that and less going to illustrator and open up that duplicate. So that's this one here, and it's exactly where I started with the other one. So it's just a blank clipping mask. This one looks like it's going to stroke on it, which I've got to take off and basically here. I went through the exact same steps, so I would go into my swatches, open my Swatch library and you notice there it was already on the list. I didn't have to go to other library and located. It's just there, and now I would go through the exact same steps. So what I would do is go back to that mean document. When was it? And I would select the next one in line. Let's grab. This one was grabbed. This one copy. Go to the next number in the sequence and I would paste again. You can see that it's above the clipping mask so I would put it below, and I'm just going to copy and the number paste it in back. So, command be this one is not a clipping mask. If it was a clipping mask, it would let me release. So it's just a rectangle. I fill it with whatever color and I had in mind for that particular swatch and position it where I needed it to be and go through those same steps electoral go to create my swatch, choose the type of tile type of my measurements, and then you can see that that works perfectly fine for that one as well. So off camera, I'm gonna go ahead and do that. I'm going to create all of these the large versions of my patterns that I need for creating the mock ups and I will come back and we'll do a couple of tests mock ups to export this particular asset. What I would do is open up my assets export. Drag it in there. This will allow me to export it. All I need really is a j peg to change that. And for my mockups, I generally leave it at 80. This time it may be tried at 50. Export. It will ask me where to locate it and make a new folder told large patterns, watches for mockups, shoes, that folder. And it tells me up here that I am successful in my export. Right? So in the next little bit, I'm gonna do all of that. And when I come back, we're going to play with two or three mock ups I've got Open and Photoshopped. 11. Lesson 10 Mockups and Sell Sheet: so I decided to go ahead and create multiple files here. So I did end up naming them in consecutive order on my naming protocol. Right? So you'll see me opening each of them individually and going through and creating the watches that I me or my mock ups. Great. So here are all of my final patterns. So it go through and do that for all of them, and then I would end up with all of them numbered here he to whatever letter it would be. I'm going to stop here just for expediency. And then I want to show you how I went about working on my lockups. So here is one of the mockups that I did. And the weight most mockups work is that there are smart objects. So let's take a look at how I worked with those smart objects. So let's say, for instance, this one here. So this is a little chair with the pillow, and this, you can see, is an icon for a smart object. So double click on that. There's my current selection of fabric that I put into it. I could either open one of those assets so Let's just choose another one randomly, this one selected all Copy it, close it, paste it. And once I save it, man, it's taking a little bit of time because about so many documents open. Go back to my kids room and you can see that the pill fabric here has been replaced. You could go ahead and experiment and try different patterns on different objects. If I was to double click on this blankets. Smart object. I turn it off for a second. You can see these are all in separate pieces so I could change them if necessary. Let's say that's a remain one there. I'm gonna double click on it. Once it opens up, you could see that my main fabric is when actuals for this one. Let's just say it was to place this one on there. Of course I would go back and get a bigger copy of it, but I just want to show you this real quick for you to just be able to visualize how it works. Well, you see, with the Robert that I changed here, I updated that smart object and what you can see here on this particular mock up is that these are all linked and because of their linked every bit of that fabric that could separate pieces, let's say the bottom of the blanket at peace. They're actually all linked together. So when I'm paste in one smart object in peace into them all, this is a mock up by Yuri on Creative Market. And I think it was this one in this bundle here kids frames and wall markup bundles. And it's got the main document when you first open it up has, like a jillion items that you can choose from. You can really customize your scene. I could easily spend another week working on this, getting a bit a graphic, really working out the difference, fabrics and all these small cups, all of that sort of thing. But I wanted to just show us quick as I could. So you get the idea of how that all works another one that I did waas these shoes, which I think are pretty cool. And obviously those are walk up by create see another one of my favorite suppliers on creative market. And what I did is I went through and I did my version one of myself, She so again I would probably take a lot more time and work on this. There's lots of things I could see that I would alter. But this is the basic idea myself. She here is all smart objects as well. So if I double click from the smart object, I can replace whatever is on it and go back to it. So this updated. And of course I wouldn't have two copies of that on the same cell sheet. But you get the idea so I would figure out what my final selection is on my collection, and I would put a copy of each of the fabrics for each of the patterns on this cell sheet. This is just one of the cell sheets that I use. This is one of the ones I featured in my class creating killer cell sheets. You might want to take a look at that. If you don't know how to do this. Our youth, you just want to have a template. It's just a template that I actually will provide to you so that you can work with it for experimenting. Okay, they said, double click on any of the smart objects and you're taken to the document where you can change your pattern. Some of them off if you don't need them on. So now you've got a basic idea of follicle boat doing my cups of myself sheets leaving the final lesson, and we're gonna wrap things up there. 12. Outro: Hey there. We made it to the end. Can you even believe it? I am so impressed. I can't wait to actually see what you've done in creating this collection. Please make sure that you post some of the results. If you happen to share on social media, could you hash Tag me, Delores? An aspirin slash skill share. I'd be happy to put examples and links on my blawg. Please let me know how it worked out with doing the two courses together. If you did. I learned so much when I see examples of how my students work through the process and you know what other people will too. We posted here, please get involved in the community. Leave comments and questions, and I will get back to you as soon as I possibly can. Please follow me at Dolora. Start Canada on Facebook and Instagram and check out my to Pinterest sites. I have one called just simply Delores Art Delores. Nah, sprint and the other one is called Teacher Delores. Aspirant, I've lots of resource is to share with you there. I really encourage you to take my cell sheets class and create sell sheet for this collection. And I would love to see that shared Thank you so much. And by Frau