Ever wonder how to create beautiful ogee shapes in Affinity Designer? Have you been wanting to add ogees to your surface pattern design portfolio, but thought they looked too complicated?

It's not as difficult as you might think, in fact, I'm going to show you how to create three ogee patterns, three different ways, that aren't difficult at all!

Hi everyone! I'm Tracey, an illustrator, photographer and designer from the Chicago area, and welcome to class!

Welcome to the next class in my series of surface pattern design classes, called "Pattern Toolbox!" In this series of classes, we'll focus on a specific pattern, or theme of patterns, in a variety of applications: the Affinity suite, Adobe, and Procreate. With each lesson, you'll walk away from class with a new design for your portfolio, as well as experience in tools that can expand your creativity in surface pattern design and beyond.

Affinity Designer is packed with tons of amazing tools, but, in this class, we only need to focus on a small handful to make beautiful ogee shapes for our surface pattern designs. Throughout the class, we'll looking at:

How to turn a single ellipse in to a template for an ogee shape: I'll show you how you can break the ellipse in to a few single strokes and turn it in to a template for an ogee shape. I'll also show you how choosing the size of the original ellipse can impact your final shape and it's ease of tiling across the canvas.
We'll look at how to use the Shape Builder and multiple ellipses to create an ogee: We'll harness the power of the shape builder to create any size ogee from a series of six simple ellipses
How to turn a single straight line in to a beautiful, versatile ogee shape: All it takes is one single stroke with the Pen tool and a little node tool action to create a series of connected, and tile-able ogee shapes. I'll show you how to create the initial template and how to quickly, and easily tile that line across the canvas with ease.
How to set up your canvas, and your initial ogee shape, for efficiency: When you think ahead to what you want your final outcome to be, and set up your initial shape with that in mind, you can quickly and easily, create tons of ogee patterns, at any scale, for your print on demand needs and portfolio.
How to test your patterns using the Gradient tool: I'll show you how to save your artboards as assets and use the bitmap feature in the gradient tool to test your designs quickly, right inside Designer.

Affinity Designer V2 (desktop or iPad)
- Please note, there are tools used in this class that are only available in V2 of Designer

I'll be using the desktop version of Affinity Designer V2. Most tools used in the class are available on both the iPad and desktop versions, with the exception of the Move Data Entry feature. For those on the iPad, you can still follow along and use the traditional power duplicate method.

Please note, while you can create the same patterns in Affinity Photo, there are some tools used in this class, such as the Shape Builder, that are only available in Affinity Designer.

While this class is beginner friendly, it does assume some familiarity with Affinity Designer V2 and the overall surface pattern design process. Please note, we will not be reviewing the interface in this class so it is important that you know where all tools are located, and the basics of how Designer works, in order to have a successful time with this class.

Hi there! I'm Tracey. I'm an illustrator, designer, and photographer located in the Chicagoland area. You can find more information about me, and my work in my full profile. (find the link above) I've been a full time artist for over a decade, after leaving the corporate world behind in 2011. In addition to teaching, I am a full time creator who sells my work on my own site, as well as print on demand sites like Spoonflower, Society6, Etsy and more.

I've been using Affinity products for the last several years and love to learn as much as I can about the tools so I can not only use them the way they were intended to work but make them work for me; and I love sharing that knowledge with my students! I've had the privilege of being spotlighted by Serif, the company who created the app, twice as a go to teacher for their apps. You can find links to the spotlight articles, as well as a Creative Session I've created for their YouTube channel, on my profile page.

If you have any questions about the class, or would like feedback on your project, please feel free to let me know in the Discussion section of class, or by emailing me at hello@traceycapone.com.

I look forward to seeing you in class!

Music Credit: "Passionate Choices," by Mansij on artlist.io

Elena Manso

Dreamy visual artist

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