Roaming Square Pattern in Adobe Illustrator - A Graphic Design for Lunch™ Class

1. Roaming Square Pattern Introduction: Hello, I'm Helen Bradley. Welcome to this Graphic Design for Lunch class; Create a Roaming Square 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. Now, today we're going to create a rambling square pattern that's been adapted from a border pattern, and I've made it into a repeating seamless tile pattern. You'll learn some interesting and new techniques as we go along working on this pattern. As you're watching these videos, you're going to see a prompt which asks you if you would recommend this class to others. Please, if you're enjoying the class and learning things from it, would you do two things for me? Firstly, answer yes to the fact that you would recommend it to others, and secondly, write just a few words about why you're enjoying the class. These recommendations help other students to see that this is a class that they too might enjoy and learn from. If you'd like to leave me 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. If you're ready now, let's get started on our rambling square pattern in Illustrator. 2. Pt 1 - Create the basic shape: To get started with our pattern, we're going to create a new document and we don't need anything too big today. I'm going to create a document that's just 500 pixels by 500 pixels in size. I'm working in RGB color mode. Of course, if you're working with an earlier version of Illustrated, this is the dialogue that you'll see, so just go ahead and create your document. Now we're going to be working with some rounded rectangles, so I'm going to select the rounded rectangle tool and click once in the document. I want a rounded rectangle that's 50 pixels square, and that has a nine pixel corner radius. I'll do that and click Okay. I don't want it to have a fill, I just wanted to have a stroke. Now we're going to make a duplicate of this, so we're just going to select over it and holding down the Alt key option on a Mac, just drag a second copy of this away. We need to do some surgery to these squares because we don't need all the bits that we're seeing here. First of all, we're going to remove this pace of this square. I am going to the direct selection tool. I'm just going to select over this corner pace and press Delete, and I'm going to select over the side piece here and delete. I want this shape here, and I want to get rid of the same paces from this part of this square. I'm just going to select over the corner and this side and just press delete, and so now I've got two squares that are missing pieces. We need to align these to HR, so I'm going to select either both of them ongoing to the align tools. I'll click Show Options and I want to be aligning to selection or aligned to key object, but just not the art board at this stage. I want to align these to the top so the tops are nicely aligned, and so I'm just going to click this. They were fine already but it's really important that we get them lined up perfectly here. Now the other thing I want to use is this one here, horizontal distribute space and I want it set to zero, and when I click this, what happens is that these two shapes butt up against each other so that they're ready to be joined. We'll select the Direct Selection Tool and just select over this point here, there is an anchor point on each of these shapes at this position, and if we choose object path join, then will join these two shapes together so they're going to travel as a single shape. At this point we're going to enlarge the stroke on the shapes. I'm going to select over the shapes. I'm going to the appearance panel, and I'm going to enlarge this to six pixels. We've got a nice thick line here. This is the starting point for our rhyming pattern. In the next video, we're going to go ahead and start joining these together to make the roaming elements. 3. Pt 2 - Create the filler squares: I'm going to zoom out of this shape just a little bit because I want to see a bit more of the area I'm working with. I'm going to select over my shape. I'm going to make a duplicate. I'm going to hold the alt or option key as I drag a duplicate away. What I want to do is position this exactly opposite this point here. I'll zoom in so I can see my anchor points really, clearly. I'm going to select this shape here. I'm going to target this anchor point because I want to drag it via the anchor point. I'll just drag it up here and position it right, opposite and on top of the anchor point on this shape here. Now if I zoom in even more closely, I can double-check to make sure these anchor points are in exactly the same position. I'll click on this anchor point here, and I'm going to read these dimensions of here. Now they're going to be probably uneven dimensions, so you may want to write them down just so you can remember them. Once you've written them down, go and select this set of anchor points on this line here. Make sure that the anchor point is in exactly the same position if they are and mine are, you'll select over both of these points and then choose object path join. I'm going to zoom back out and you can see that we've got the beginnings of this rambling design. Now we need another copy of our shape. Select over it and Alt drag a duplicate away. Now this one's going to join up at exactly the same position as the last one did. Going to zoom into this point where the join is supposed to take place and just make sure that my anchor point is in exactly the right position. It looks pretty good to me here, but I can check up here to make sure that the anchor points on both of these lines are in exactly the same position. If they are, I can select over them and I'm just going to join this with object path join. I'll zoom back out. We've now got all the rambling elements that we need for our pattern. We're now going to go and create the little boxes that are going to go in the corner of this shape. For this, I'm just going to click away from my shape. I'm going back to my rounded rectangle. I'll click here because I want to create a rounded rectangle that is about 22 pixels by 22 pixels, so it's going to be a square. I want a 5 pixel corner radius. I'm going to flip the fill and the stroke sought to filled shape. I also want this to be a different color. I could make it the same color later on, but if I make it a different color now, just multiplies my options for working with this shape in future. I'm just going to zoom in because I need another rectangle of exactly the same size. I'm going to click on the Rectangle tool this time not the rounded rectangle and I'm going to make a 22 by 22 pixel rectangle. I'll align these two so that they're right over the top of each other. Then I'm going to the Pathfinder. If you don't see your Pathfinder pallet, you'll find it by choosing window and then pathfinder. We want this, we want the divide option, and then we're going to choose object ungroup because that gives us access to the places that we just carved off. If you select over this corner here, you'll see that that is actually shape which can be removed and then go down here to this corner and remove it. There are now 3 shapes that you've got. You've got two corners and the rounded rectangles. Select over all of them and go to the Unite tool to turn them back into a single shape. Now these shapes are going in this position, in the artworks. I'm just going to move it into position. Let's zoom in. I want to make sure that it's well tucked into the corner so there can be a slight overlap of between it and they shape underneath. Once I get it in position, I'm going to choose object, arrange and center back because I want it tucked behind this shape. Now I need to repeat it all the way down this shapes. Let's just zoom out quickly and I'm going to select it. I'll choose effect, distort and transform, and then transform. I'll turn preview on and I want three copies of it. I want the original and three copies. Now I'm going to start moving it. From my experience, 50 and 50 is the movement that we need. We need to move it out horizontally 50 and vertically 50, and that just tucks it into position. I'll click okay. Next we're going to do a second transformation with effect and distort and transform, and then transform. I want to apply a new effect. I want one copy and I want to see what I'm doing here. What I want to do is to bring it back into this area here. To do that, I'm going to start working in a negative direction. My horizontal is going to be a negative number of pixels. If I hold the shift key, I can move it just a little bit faster. I'm going negative 50 horizontally and nothing vertically because I want it tucked up in the top corner here. When I'm done, I'll click okay. Now we've got the basic shapes that we need. We need to do a little bit of work on the shapes, and we'll do that in the next video. 4. Pt 3 - Rotate and Finish the Design: Right now we created all of these shapes using two transformations. We need to start expanding these shapes. I'm going to select this one shape which is in control of all of these other red shapes, and I'll choose object Expand Appearance and then object Ungroup. Because I wanted to ungroup these until ungroup is no longer an option. There are a lot of ungroups to go through here, but now ungroup is no longer an option so these are all free. I'm going to select the Direct Selection Tool and I'm going to hover over this point here and just pull this out. Now, you can do this in the most recent version of Illustrator. In earlier versions of illustrator, you may not be able to pull this line here. I'm just going to pull it and you can say that I can move it up into this area here. Now, if you can't do that with your version of Illustrator, what you're going to do is select on this shape and you'll go to the anchor point toward the add anchor point tool, and you'll just click to add an anchor point here. Then go back to the Direct Selection Tool and you can drag your anchor point into position. It's just, it's a little bit easier in later versions of illustrator because we can actually pull an edge. We're only doing that on the shapes here that need to but into this area here. I'm just going to pull this up here. Now let's go back out and see where we're at. These shapes all take very well into the top corner. These have to be manipulated just a little bit to fill in that area and that's what we just did. At this point let's go back to the last pallet. Looks like we need to tidy things up before it goes out of control really quickly. What I'm going to do is select these four objects here, and I'm going to group those. Let me just shift click on them here and we'll turn them into a group. They're the four objects that were not altered at all. Now let's go and get the second lot of four objects and we're going to put them in a group as well. They're similar because they all got pulled a little bit to fill in this gap. Now let's select everything and group the entire object. At this point we're going to rotate it. I'm just going to hold the Shift key as I rotated 45 degrees. It's running across the document now instead of down it. We're ready now to go and put an extra stroke on this path. I'm going to open up my layers pallet here, just make sure that I can access just this path. This is just the path that I've got selected, not these red boxes. I'm going to choose object, path, outlined stroke. What it does is it converts this path which really was a line that had a thick stroke on it into a filled shape. That allows us to add another stroke. With everything still selected that I need to have selected, I'm going to the appearance panel. Here is our stroke and I'm going to give it a color. Again, I'm going to choose a different color. We have plenty of flexibility later on for making these all the same color if we want to or making this white but for now, let's go and give it a color that we can actually see. We're going to give it 1.5 pixels of strokes. You'll need to type in 1.5 because that's not a selection you can make from the dialogue. If you didn't say your appearance panel over here in the panel list, you would of course go to it by choosing window and then appearance. Now we're ready to make a duplicate of this entire shapes. I'm going to select the entire group, and I'm going to choose edit copy and then edit paste in place. That's going to select just the copy that I made. The other one is not selected. Everything's looking good right now. I'll choose objects, transform and move, because I want to use the move dialogue to move this down. I'm going to start by moving it across 36 pixels because I think that's about as far as it needs to go up and down about 106. Now, at this point, I can just click "Ok" and then double check to make sure that this is lined up nicely. Now, the best way to line this up is probably going to be to create some role aligns. I'm going to choose "view" and then "Rulers" and click "Show Rulers". Now I can drag in a ruler from the margin here, but I'd like to see things a little more clearly before I do. Let's just zoom in here, and now I'm going to drag a ruler across and I want it to be just where these two shapes intersect. If I haven't got it right, I can zoom in and because these guides that come off the ruler line are just objects in Illustrator, you can just drag it into position. When you get it right, just lock it down so it can't move. I'm going to go back out. Now this is going to be a handy guide for me to line this bottom element up. I'm going to zoom in and just make sure that the bottom element is in pretty much the same position as this element is here. It's held by probably a pixel. [inaudible] it's going to move it over. Now we need to bring these little boxes here, a duplicate of them down here and down to here. We kept them in a group so that they would be easy to find. I'm just going to make sure that I've got them. Well, that's not the right set. This is the set that we can make a copy of. I'm going to go and grab that group and I'm going to choose edit copy and then edit paste. I've got a second copy of this group, so I am going to drag it down into position. Again, I'm going to be zooming in and out here just to make sure that I can see things really clearly on the screen as I work. I'm going to place these in position, and they have appeared on top of the shapes. You can say that there at the very top of the last panel so that means they are in front of these lines, which is not where I want them. I'm just going to pull them down behind everything else. But I do need another copy of them because I made them down here. I'm going to drag them onto the New Layer icon here, or the new icon, which will give me a duplicate. Now I can go and drag the duplicate away and just put it into position down here too. At this point we've got all the elements that we need to make a repeating pattern. In the next video, we're going to come in and add a few more guides, and we're going to make the bounding box for our pattern. 5. Pt 4 - Make and Recolor the Swatch: Now the element that we need for our repeating pattern is going to start here, and it's going all the way across to here. I think I want to either get rid of this guide or I want to move it. I'm going to unlock it and I'm going to zoom into the area I'm working in. I can select the guide with the selection tool and just move it across into the position I want it to be. It's just jumping into position locked really nicely there. I'm thinking that it's in a really good position, so it does look pretty good here to me. At this point, you might have a little bit of difficulty in moving things around with pixel accuracy. But for now, I probably just sit on how it looks and just say if we can work with what we've got and we don't have to perfect things totally. I'm going to go across one, two elements here, and the next guides going in here. I'm just going to drag this guide into position, and it's locked down now in position. This is the left and right area of my bounding box, and the top and bottom are just going to be here at the top and bottom of this shape. Again, I'm going to zoom in and do want to put in guides because it's just going to make things a lot easier to work with. I want my guides to be just slightly over the edge of this patent pace here. The reason for this is that these two adjoining up really nicely here. We want these to join up really nicely in the patent pace, so you want some slight overlap here. Lock that guide down, and let's just roll down here to the bottom. We're going to put in another guide again just over the tip of that place. To make our pattern will need a no fill, no stroke bounding box or I'm going to the rectangle tool. I have no fill and no stroke selected. I'm going to use my guides to draw my bounding box. I'm just going to click here, over, the intersection of those guides and drag down here. It's wise to double-check your bounding box because it can be out. So you want to get in close to it and just make sure that it is snapped to those guides. Well, it is on the top, but it certainly isn't here and it's out. Let's try both sides of this shapes. Make sure that the bounding boxes in the right place and bounding box looks good here at the bottom. Now, the bounding box not only has to be a no fill, no stroke rectangle, but it also has to be behind everything, otherwise it just won't work as a bounding box. I'm going to take this rectangle and move it behind everything. I'll choose Object, Arrange, Send to back. That's a good way of doing it for this particular shape because it makes sure that the very bottom of the left stack, but also outside this group. Now we're ready to create our patterns on going to the Selection tool and I' m select over everything, except my guides because they're locked down so they won't come with me. I'll drag and drop this into the Swatches palette, and that just creates a pattern swatch. Now at this point I can turn off my guide so that I can't see them. Let's go and create a second art board from just going to click on the Art Board tool, and we're going to drag out and art board alongside the first one. This is again going to be 500 pixels by 500 pixels in size. I'll click back on the selection tool, let's move this into position. I'll add a rectangle to the art board that is the same size as the art board. I'm going to center this on the art board now my alignment options right now are aligned to selection. I'm going to click Aligned to art board and just click horizontal align center and Vertical Align center to align that square to the art board, I'll target the fill because I want to fill it with my new pattern and I'll click on the new pattern swatch. The pattern looks just wonderful, it's overlapping just perfectly and everything looks really good. We do have some white fracture lines, hairline fractures through this pattern. There's a problem with illustrated there. Not a problem with the pattern, the patents just fine. You can tell that they're a problem of Illustrators and not of the pattern because if you come in here to the scale dialogue, turn off transform objects, and just slightly adjust the size of the pattern, if the fracture lines either disappeared or move from place to place, then there an illustrator problem and not a pattern problem. If they stay in the same place, then the pattern's got a problem in it. Here, this is just fine. I'm able to get rid of the fracture lines by just decreasing the size of my pattern slightly and I'll click OK. There's another way that you can get rid of fracture lines to by going into your preferences on a pay say that edit preferences general, and you'll de select anti alias artwork. On a Mac, you go to Illustrate a preferences General, and again, just they select anti alias artwork. I don't need to do it because my it's working just fine. If you needed to make some alterations to a pattern, say that you've got your overlap wrong. For example, only need to do is come back in here and adjust your bounding box or whatever else it is in your pattern that is not working. Once you've got it done, all you're going to do is just select over it and drag and drop it back into the swatches panel. If you hold down the Alt key on a pay, say, option on a Mac, you can actually place it on top of the original one. That will just replace it not only in the swatches pattern, but it will also replace the pattern here in this box. Now one of the things that you can do with this pattern because of the way it's designed is that we can actually recover it and get a really interesting monochromatic effect. What I'm going to do is just select over this rectangle here, and let's go to the re-color dialogue. Now what I want to do with this as I want to recolor the black, and right now I can't. What I'm going to do is click here and say, yes, I do want to add a new color to the harmony. I want this to be an arrow, because when it's an arrow, I can recolor this. I'm actually going to double-click on this color because I know I want the blacks to be white, I'm going to set them to white and click OK. That gives me this outline look. I also want to make the blue and the red areas the exact same color. What I'm going to do is pick up the red here and just drop it on top of the blue. You can see now that both the red and the blue have been mapped to blue, I now have a monochromatic pattern that is just blue and white, and we've built that from a three color pattern. Whenever you get the chance to build a pattern up with multiple colors, do so because it's really easy to make it monochromatic later on. It would be really difficult to make a monochromatic pattern full-color later on. Now, I've got this new color scheme, I'm going to click to add it as a new color group, and I'll just click OK. You'll notice up here in the swatches palette that we've got a new pattern swatch. Here is the old pattern swatch. It hasn't been lost, but there's also a new pattern swatch that is monochromatic, rambling pattern. 6. Pt 5 - Project and Wrap up: Your project for this class is to go ahead and to create this rambling square pattern yourself. You can create it as a multi-color pattern and then re-color it if you wish to be monochromatic. Post an image of your completed pattern as your class project. I hope that you've enjoyed this class and that you've learned things about illustrator that you didn't know before. Now as you're watching these videos, you will have seen a prompt which asks you whether you would recommend this class to others. Please, if you enjoyed the class and learned something from it, would you do two things for me. Firstly, answer yes to the fact that you would recommend it to others, and secondly, write just a few words about why you enjoyed the class. These recommendations help other students to say that this is a class that they too might enjoy and learn from. Now if you'd like to leave me 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. My name is 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.