Transcripts
1. Introduction: My name is Maria Vashchuk. I'm a surface pattern designer from Holland. I live in a small town close to Amsterdam. A little urban garden surrounds my studio, that's why I call my atelier The Tiny Garden. In this class, I will teach you about typography pattern design. Typography is a trend, that has grown in popularity in the past few years. You can find typography patterns in home decor, fabric, stationery. This course is for pattern designers that would like to enrich their portfolio with typography pattern pieces, and for typography and hand lettering artists that may find their way to pattern design. I will share with you my way of creating typography pattern designs. I will show you where typography patterns could be found on products, and in which markets you may find a way to use your work. In this class, I will show you how to come from this, to this, to this, and maybe something like this. I will introduce you to simple sketching techniques to warm up before you dive in into sketching elements for your typography pattern prints, and I will show you the way I create typography pattern prints in Adobe Illustrator. I hope this course will motivate you to create typography pattern prints and add them to your portfolio. Let's get started!
2. The Project: The class project will be to create a typography pattern design. You may choose to use just typography elements in your pattern design, or you may choose to combine typography elements with florals or narrative elements of the print. It's totally up to you. Please share your project in the student's Projects section for fellow students to comment. If you have any questions about the class, you may write them in the Discussion section and I will reply to you as soon as I can. I look forward to seeing your typography pattern prints!
3. Inspiration: Hi, and welcome back to the class! In this video lesson, we will talk about inspiration. The great source of inspiration for me is books. I love beautiful books. I like to collect them. I like to look through them. I will show you my favorite collection of books about pattern design and just design in general. Of course, you can search for ideas and inspiration online, creating mood boards on Pinterest, searching on Instagram, taking pictures. Sometimes for me, it's just enough to go for a walk to come back with ideas for my new pattern collection. It is important to collect your inspiration sources because sometimes on some days, you may feel like you don't have many ideas to create something new, and on those days, you can just browse through your resources and find something that will warm your heart and help you to create great work. I like to collect books with beautiful designs and illustrations. They are a great source of inspiration for me. For instance, this book, "Drawing and Illustration", is a lovely collection of work from different inspiring artists. "Art Deco Designs and Motifs". I bought it on a trip to Florence, and it has a great collection of old Art Deco designs and motifs. You can see the are some typography patterns here and here. This is an amazing picture book by Tom Schamp. An endless source of creative ideas for inspiration. Just look at these letters-animals. "A Map of the World, According to Illustrators and Storytellers". This is a book I love for many reasons. First of all, it has a great collection of work of amazing artists, and I love the color combinations of many illustrated maps, and it is full of hand lettering. Just look how unbelievably cool it is. In the next lesson, we will cover two types of typography patterns, and we also will talk about if there is a market for typography patterns. See you in the next lesson!
4. Market For Typography Patterns: In this lesson, we will cover two types of typography pattern designs, and we will talk about if there is a market for typography patterns. I will also show you one of my collections where I integrated typography patterns and how I translated this collection into products. There are two main types of typography pattern designs; patterns that integrate just typography elements, patterns that integrate together typography elements and illustrations. Now, I will show you what I mean. I like to incorporate typography pattern designs into some of my collections as it adds some unexpected element to my otherwise floral on narrative collections. It is good to have different patterns in your pattern collection that still looks cohesive and integrated together. You can find typography pattern prints on many products in different markets, from socks to home decor, and gift wrap. Here, I picked some products from different shops with just typography designs. You can see typography patterns a lot in the gift and wrapping paper industry. Like this example of a gift bag from Paperchase and bright and modern gift paper from Hallmark. Typography patterns are used a lot in the crafting industry. Example from an Echo Park Paper. You will also see typography designs on notebooks. For example, a traveler's notebook on the upper right side. I also spotted a typography print on a backpack. Of course, typography prints are used a lot in the fashion industry. I even have a dress with typography print which I love. Kitchen products, I spotted this apron on the Target website. Typography prints could also go for table runners, napkins, and many other table products. I spotted a wonderful typography print on a blanket at Anthropologie. So home decor products are also a market for us. Another type of typography prints is a combination of illustrated elements and typography. If you don't want to feel like starting with pure typography prints, you may choose to include some elements of typography or hand lettering into your designs you're feeling comfortable with. This type of typography design has its own place on a market. I saw it a lot on baby and kids' products, upper left corner, two examples from H&M, combining animal illustrations and typography. I also love this board from Paperchase with a metro map combining illustration and text. Of course, you will find this type of prints on stationery products a lot, and again, on gift and wrapping paper. Combined typography and illustration prints could be found a lot on bedding, both for adults and kids, and towels, why not?! I would like to show you one of my collections, the Love Story collection, where I successfully used typography patterns, and it seems to add some interesting elements to the collection. So you can see this one in one colorway, another one in another colorway, and I usually do a few more options. It could be something like this, or maybe if you want to present your work to say, a wallpaper company, then, you might want to add some other options, color options like these, some soft colors, maybe even in blue. So this artboard is the way I will show my work to art directors. I will include hero prints, some coordinates, and sometimes, I will include colors as well. As you can see, there is a pretty big market for typography pattern designs. An important thing to remember is to put your heart in every design you do. If you create samples that inspire you, it will definitely inspire other people. In the next lesson, we will dive directly into sketching. I will show you my sketching routine, how I warm up and draw elements for typography pattern prints. See you in the next lesson!
5. Sketching Materials: For this class, you will need some paper. I like to use Fabriano paper, 200 grams. You can use any kind of paper, but I would not suggest you to use a paper of thickness lower than 100 grams. Also, you will need ink pen. I like this with a fine tip. This is my favorite with small rectangle tip. You can use also a bamboo pen, also fun. Sometimes I use fine liner. Pigment liner like this one, 0.4 line thickness will be okay. You will also need a pen, just a regular pen. Some napkins in case you have some emergency. I like to have water by my hand and I use Indian ink. I would not suggest you using ecoline or colored ink, because when you scan it, you can get interrupted line. You will also need a ruler like this or any other will do to make a supporting lines.
6. Sketching Exercise: Hi, welcome back to the class. In this class, I will walk you through my usual sketching routine, warming up exercises that I usually do before I dive into design elements for my typography patterns. We will go through a few exercises like these. I will show you exactly how I did each of them. In resources section of the class, you can find a PDF with all the exercises and lines. You can just print it out and use to sketch. For this exercise, you will need a piece of paper. I already make some lines. You don't have to draw them by hand. You can find exercises and lined paper to print out in cluster resources section on a right side panel. I will use two kind of ink pens. One with a bit rectangular tip and another one with a fine tip. You may want to use markers if you prefer. The only thing you will need to pay attention on, if you can regulate the thickness of the line. I will use Ecoline, colored ink, and Indian ink for this exercise just to have some colors because it's more fun. You may use just one kind of ink if you prefer. I like to have water by my side to clean my pen and some napkins in case you have some emergency or have to clean something out. I will start with a fine brush. I'll start with Ecoline because it's lighter color. So when I clean it, it's easier because the water doesn't get that dirty. Let's deep my pen into the Ecoline and start with the first one. First exercise will be to warm up and the exercise is you can make one thin line and then continue with a thick line. So it's just playing with the thickness of the line, so you can regulate it with your hand and get used to the pen and the material you use. Sometimes it's quite difficult to get different thickness of the lines so you need to really press. One thin line and then one thick line. I will use another pen just to see what is the difference. I will start with the thin line and continue with the thick line. Okay, so this was our first exercise. For the second exercise, I will switch again to my first brush and I will do some kind of waves. Start with the thin line, and then go thicker. You keep it light and then you press it. Let's try now the ink pen. We go thin and then we press it. For the next exercise, I will change the ink, just to have some more color. I will use this blue ink. That exercise is all about connecting elements. We will start with the thin line and then go with the thick line. So it's like if you were drawing letters already. For the next exercise, we will make circles. Just loosen upper hand a little bit more. We will start again with a thin line and then go to thicker. I'll start again with another brush. This time, I will use my favorite Indian ink. Okay, let's get started. Let's draw this kind of singlet shape. Just an exercise so you don't have to really worry about how your line goes, if it is smooth or not. If every element reaches the supporting lines, it doesn't really matter just to loosen your hand a little bit, and to feel more free with the material. Because you see again, different brush give you a different effect. The last exercise, it will be basically the same exercise, but then you'll go a different direction. From up to down. It was exercise number 6. I hope you enjoyed the warm up and in the next section, I will show you how I usually sketch elements for typography patterns.
7. Sketching Typography Elements: I will start by drawing two supporting lines. Once again, I am not a typography artist so two supporting lines is just enough for me, for my purposes. I try to keep the space even and draw the lines lightly so they are not too much visible when I scan them. I prefer to keep lines as light as possible so when I digitalize my elements for the pattern, it's easier to remove them or sometimes you even don't have to remove them because you almost don't see them. I will fill the paper with these lines, so I can continue lettering and I don't have to stop to draw another line. I like to use Indian Ink because it gives you not interrupted plain line which you will not get for instance, with Ecoline, which was fine to use when you sketch or when you practice but I would not suggest using light color ink or Ecoline for drawing your elements for pattern design. I will use this brush, one of my favorites. I have to dip it into the ink. For this class, I will show you how I make typography pattern design on an example of one of my patterns with the word 'love'. I will start by sketching the word. I don't worry too much that I don't reach the supporting line because it's not the point for this exercise. It's just that you have the feeling that you can align the letters. I will continue sketching, try a different kind of connections and to see what you like best. I'll try to draw a bit bigger. Also, when you draw, it's nice to think about how you going to connect your words in a pattern if you want to connect them. For instance, I think for me, would be nice to connect them with a line here. This one looks a bit awkward, but I will try with the next one to connect the elements already. Then, you go to the next one. This one could be a bit too close to each other, so it looks like one word, but I want it to feel like two different words, but connected. I will try again. I prefer to draw as much elements as possible, so I have a choice when I scan them and when I see how they look like. You don't have to worry much when you see that some of your letters don't reach the supporting line. You can correct it later in Illustrator. It's just nice to have a supporting line so you can see approximately where you should draw. To have some orientation. I think I will try another brush.
8. Digitising Elements: To transfer images into my computer, I will simply take a photo with my phone. I will e-mail images to myself, or I will use AirDrop. To open your file in Adobe Illustrator, press "File", "Open" or click "Command O". I already have my file opened. I select it with "Select Tool". You can see that I have already selected some elements that I'm interested in, and that I want to work out further. I have cropped my photo. Also you can see that I don't have supportive lines anymore. I have erased them and it will make easier to use Image Trace tool, so I would suggest you do the same. To digitalize the elements. The easiest thing you can do, is to use Image Trace. You can find it here and you go to Tracing Presets and choose "Black and White Logo". If you are happy with the result, I'm happy how it looked like, you can press "Expand". Then you will have all the elements separately, you can select this, you can select this. You still can see white background, to remove it, press "Direct Select" tool, press the background and delete. I still have this element I don't need. I just can select it with "Direct Select" tool and delete. All these elements, they are still grouped together, to ungroup them press "Command Shift J". Now they are ungrouped so you can move them. But then I'm losing these whitespaces which I like and I want to keep them. I will group them together with whitespaces by pressing "Command G", I will do the same for the rest of the elements. Command G, and I move them altogether. In the next video lesson, I will show you how to correct the shapes of the elements.
9. Correcting The Shapes: Here we have our elements that we image traced. As you can see, the shape is not perfect, so I'm going to correct it. By clicking "Direct Select Tool" and clicking the image, I will zoom in a little bit to see better what I'm doing. By clicking "Select Direct Tool", select the letter you want to correct. I will use Smooth Tool to correct the lines. I will go all around the shapes of the letters to get the form I like. Sometimes you couldn't get some anchor points by using just Smooth Tool, so I will switch back to direct select. You can do so by pressing "Command". Then I select this anchor point and I want to move it a bit so I will use just arrow direction. I will use select direct tool again and I will move this and also move that a bit, and use arrow again. This one I do like this, so it looks better. For this one, we can still use Smooth Tool, press "Command" and go back to Direct Select Tool. Use Smooth Tool again, press "Command" to select the letters, correct the shape. I will do the same here. I can move those or re-center, select letters and here we go. In my case, doesn't measure if the inner shape of a letter and the letter itself overlap or not but I want to keep them both smooth and nice because I can color the negative space of letters and I can use just the outline of the letters for some projects. It will be easier to change the color later on. I will go with the Smooth Tool around all the elements in my design. I will speed up a bit. First element is looking good to me. I will move it a little bit, I will start with it next time. I will do the same. I will use Smooth Tool and some corrections I will do by HIT. Second element also looks good to me, and this one I think I don't need, I'll just delete it. The next step will be making a pattern repeat.
10. Pattern Repeat Pt. 1: I have opened my elements created in a previous video into our board that is 1,000 pixels per 1,000 pixels. I have these elements here but I want to resize them, so I will press "Shift", and I will drag the box so they become a bit smaller. I can put some down, and I don't want to have "love" above another one so I will put them like this. To create a pattern repeat, all you need to remember is that all the elements that are on left side should be duplicated on your right side, and everything that is on the top should be duplicated in your bottom. I will select these elements, press "Command C" to make a copy, and press "Command F" to paste them in front. Then I go to "Transform", and whether my art board is 1,000 per 1,000 pixels, I can just add 1,000 pixels to the X, press "Enter", and then we have these elements. But now I can see that these two are not matching at all, and it's because this element is not straight. So first I will need to make it straight. For this, I will use "Pen Tool", press it, hold "Shift" so the line is straight, press it again, then I have a line. I will change the stroke color from white to something visible. I have it here, I need to lock it, pressing "Command 2", then I put it here. You see it's not straight at all. Maybe it's better. I need to zoom in, then it's easier to navigate it. [inaudible] Now it's much better. Let's check this one as well. Not super straight. I will move it as well a little bit up, a little bit more. Now it looks better to me. I need to unlock the line by pressing "Option Command 2" and I can delete it. These two elements I don't need because they're not corrected. I will use this element and I will use this element. Maybe I will even make them a bit smaller. Everything on the left side should be on the right side. For this I will need to copy elements by pressing "Command C" and then pressing "Command F" to paste them in front of the elements that are on my art board. Now I go to "Transform". Whether my art board is 1,000 pixels, I will add 1,000 pixels, press "Enter" and then voila, we have these elements copied exactly to the right side. Now I need to connect them, but I think they are too far from each other. So I will make these elements a little bit bigger. I think it should look nicer, and then we do all the operation again. I press "Command C", press "Command F", go to "Transform", add 100 pixels, press "Enter", and we have these elements here. Now I will need to work on the connections of the element, and for this I need to zoom in a little bit. This should be connected to that element. I will just drag them here. I need to take care that they look nicely as if it was painted by hand. Another thing you can do, you can select both of them, then you don't select these inner elements, and you go to "Pathfinder", and you unite the shapes. Then you have this element connected to this element, but it's not straight and it's connected just as it was in the art board, then you can use a Smooth tool and smooth it up a little bit. This might be easier. But sometimes still I need to correct them by hand using Direct Selection tool. Now we need to connect the next element. This goes here and this goes here. It may be a bit lower. I shouldn't move this part because then it's not at the same place on the right side. Be careful with that. I select it, I go to "Pathfinder", unite, and then we have these two shapes together, and I can smooth it up with the Smooth tool. This is going to be a bit more right, like this. Maybe a little bit. It's okay. Maybe it's a bit too long but maybe not. We have these elements that are repeating from left side to the right side, but to create a full pattern tile I need to duplicate them. I will select them, copy "Command C", and paste them "Command V", just anywhere then I can drag them to the place I want them to be. Maybe like this. Yeah, it's not bad. It's okay. Then I can select all these elements, "Command C" "Command V", then we go here. I don't really like this line, so maybe I will move it a bit. Yes, I will move it a bit like this. This one, you remember that it should be on the top, Command C, Command F, Transform, and then I need to press minus 1,000 pixels and viola, we get it on top. We still have some space here, so I can copy this element, Command V and I put it here, for instance. The ground of our artwork has no color at the moment, so I will need to create a rectangle. It should be 1,000 pixels by 1,000 it is, and it should be placed also on 1,000, 1,000 so it aligns perfectly with the artboard. I change color to white. Yes. I need this rectangle to be at the, so I press shift, Command, left bracket, and we have it on the left side. To create a mask, I need to press Command C, Command F, and then I need to put upper rectangle to the top by pressing Command shift, right bracket. I need to recolor it in any other colors that is not existing in my artwork. I switch to CMYK, and I choose any color, it doesn't matter which color it is. Then I select everything and press Command 7. We have a repeat tile here. We created our pattern repeat, now we need to test it. To do this, you select all the tile, and this one I remove. You put your pattern tile into your swatches panel by dragging it. I zoom out a little bit and I create a new square. You can see that your pattern design is already here. You will get something like this first probably. Then you go to Object, Pattern, Edit Pattern. What you can do is size tile to the art and then you get it tight. Save as copy, pattern. Double-click on the working area and then you'll be back to your artwork. In this pattern, I don't really like these spaces and maybe these spaces, you can see it better when you zoom out and zoom in. What else you can do, go to select square, go Object, Transform, Scale, 60 percent will be okay. Transform patterns. I want to transform patterns but not the objects. I remove this and press okay. You can see these spaces are not so nicely done. This puzzles me the most. I'll press Command Z to go to initial design size. Then I have to release my mask by pressing Command alt, option, Command 7. Just do the side. What I like to do, I like to lock my artboard background by selecting it and pressing Command 2. Then when I move something around, I don't move the background. You need to make sure that all the elements are grouped together. Because if they are not grouped, then you get something like this. You see? Command Z to go back. I need to group them but be careful that you don't really group element you don't want to put here. This is a group. This will be another group. One more, group. Now when all the elements are grouped, we can make some trick. Go to Align and align the elements so they're nicely placed on a pattern repeat. This is a line I didn't like. I will be moving this to the side and this to another side, better. This one also should go here, is okay. Maybe this one a little bit on the other direction, and this one, here. I now align them again. Now I need to unlock my artwork by pressing option Command 2. Then I select the top square and color it in any color that is not in my artwork. Go to CMYK. I select everything and press Command 7. Now we have a new pattern tile, let's test it. I just drag it to the swatching palette. I press the square and this, I need to align it again. Go Object, Pattern, Edit Pattern. This one looks better to me.
11. Pattern Repeat Pt. 2: We have tested our repeat tile and since we are happy with the result, we can move forward and crop the tile and prepare files how I would send it to the client. First of all, I'm going to rename this layer to Working File. I'm going to lock it and I'm going to make a copy. Make it unvisible, unlock this one and rename it to Merged or any other name you prefer. I'm going to work on this layer. It need to be selected. With select tool, I select the tile. First I check if the background has just fill or sometimes it has L, so stroke. You don't need stroke, you need to remove it. Now, my background has just fill and no stroke. I will also change the background color to another color because when I will recolor my artwork, I need my background to be different from all the other elements, to have a different color. I make something like this. It's not the final color, I'm going to change it later. Now I will select everything, go to Object, Path, Outline Stroke, then I need to release my clipping mask by pressing "Command Option 7". Select upper square and change the color to any color that doesn't exist in your artwork. Make a new rectangle that is bigger than everything in your artwork. Select a different color for this one, send to the back by pressing "Shift Command Left bracket". Then I will select the big square, press "Shift select the small square", go to pathfinder and press Minus Front. All the elements now are added, but still you can see that they go outside of the box. To remove them, I will need to press Merge. Then with Direct Select Tool, I will select the bigger rectangle, delete it, and now I can, with my Select Tool, move my pattern tile to Swatch palette. Now we can test it again. Create a big rectangle and then you just press it and you have your pattern repeat. You can rescale it by pressing Object, Transform, Scale, and you can go bigger, remove this, transform just patterns, or you can go smaller like 50 percent. This looks good to me. Then in your layers you have two layers, and this is good way to send it to the clients.
12. Recolouring Your Pattern: To recolor artwork, I will simply drag it from Swatches Palette to my artboard. With a direct selection tool, I will select objects I would like to recolor. Go to Select > Same > Fill & Stroke, and then I will change the color to some other option I prefer, like say we can go red. Then if I like the color, I will drag it to my Swatches Palette with the selection tool. In this artwork, I can also change the color of the inner elements. Select > Same > Fill Color, because my objects don't have a stroke. Then I can choose a different color. Go to CMYK, select; I don't know, blue, for instance, and then I can recolor this as well. Select > Same > Fill & Stroke, go to CMYK, I like dark blue. Enter this. Select > Same, Fill & Color. It could go white, for instance. This color could be a bit lighter, so I can change it by selecting, Same > Fill Color and then make it lighter. This looks good to me, I'm going to save it by dragging to the Swatches Palette. You can continue like this, and it's nice, it's always nice to have color options. I usually sent to clients artwork with color options I have, so they can choose from it. Like this, this is going to being white. This looks pretty to me. I'm going to save it. I would just play around and choose the best color options you can find for your artwork.
13. Conclusion: I hope you enjoyed the class, and I hope that this class will motivate you to create typography patterns and add them some your portfolio. Please don't forget to post your class project into Project & Resources section for other students to get inspired and for me to comment, if you wish. If you have any questions about this course, feel free to write in the Discussion section, and I will reply to you as soon as I can. If you would like to keep in touch with me, you can follow me on Instagram @thetinygarden.design or right here on Skillshare by clicking the button on the top. Thank you so much for joining me in this class. I look forward to seeing your beautiful designs and keep creating!
Maria Vashchuk, pattern designer at The Tiny Garden
