Surface Pattern Design in Affinity Designer | Asanoha Motifs

Asanoha designs are beautiful geometric patterns, deeply rooted in Japanese tradition. With their star-like structure and repeating diamond-based layout, they’re one of the most satisfying geometric designs to create - but, thanks to their close relation to the asymmetrical hexagon, not without frustration.

If you’ve ever found yourself wondering how to create this head scratching, interlocking pattern, I’m going to show you how to create a seamless asanoha design in less than five minutes, by combining three simple shapes in Affinity Designer. Welcome to class!

Hi everyone! I’m Tracey, an illustrator and designer from the Chicago area, and welcome to the next class in my Pattern Toolkit Series—where we dive into specific motifs and turn them into fully functional patterns ready for your portfolio and print on design projects.

In this class, we’re taking on the asanoha—a traditional Japanese motif made from interlocking diamond shapes that form a beautiful starburst design. While it may look complex, I’ll walk you through my step by step process for creating and tiling the motif with tools that are already built in to Designer.

• First, I’ll show you how to construct the basic asanoha motif from scratch using three simple, vector shapes,
• Then, I’ll show you how to tile the design quickly, and painlessly, with the help of Designers advanced grids and snapping.
• Finally, I’ll show you how to easily create a seamless square design by adjusting your tiled motifs by just a few pixels.

And just like in other Pattern Toolkit classes, we’ll explore additional workflows that help you take your creative process further:

• I’ll show you how to use the Gradient tool to quickly scale your canvas up, as well as scale a large motif down, without losing quality.
• Plus, we’ll look at how to approach overlapping motifs, like the asanoha, when making global changes using symbols.

I’ll be working in the desktop version of Affinity Designer V2. 

If you are using the iPad version of the app, you can easily follow along, as long as you know where the corresponding tools are located.

This class is beginner-friendly but assumes some working knowledge of Designer V2 as well as basic pattern logic. Having a grasp of both the Designer interface and the basics of surface pattern design will give you a much better experience taking the class.

By the end of this class, you’ll not only have a beautiful, seamless asanoha design for your portfolio, you’ll have also learned practical techniques that can be used in future projects in Designer.

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, 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: "Way Back Home" by LØFTE" (license on file)