Adobe Illustratorby Beth Hammer

Repeating Patterns

1

First: create the design elements for your repeating pattern. It can be as simple as one shape or a complex image.

Select the elements

2

In the WINDOW menu,

select PATTERN OPTIONS

3

Click on the “Cheese Grater” and choose MAKE PATTERN

4

Now you can edit everything about your pattern in the options panel.

All of the standard illustrator tools are still available, so you can add and edit shapes from with in the pattern maker.

5

TILE TYPE changes how your pattern repeats

Be sure to experiment with the different methods to get the desired effect

Brick By Row Brick By Column Hex By Column Hex By Row

6

If you UNCHECK Size Tile to Art you will have the option to adjust the width and height of the pattern bounding box.

If you CHECK Size Tile to Art you will have the options to adjust the horizontal and vertical spacing.

These options achieve similar results if you aren’t adding any elements to your pattern.

7

With Size Tile to Art CHECKED

Adding a new shape changes the size of the box and the spacing of the entire pattern.

(V/H spacing could be adjusted to make the shapes overlap)

With Size Tile to Art UNCHECKED

Adding a new element makes no changes to the size of the box and creates overlapping shapes.

8

When elements extend outside the bounding box, or your spacing is low enough, elements will overlap.

The OVERLAP options changes which side the overlap occurs

9

Use the PATTERN TILE TOOL to adjust shape of the pattern bounding box.

Be sure to click it again when you’re finished to go back into normal editing mode.

10

When you’ve finished editing your pattern, double click anywhere outside the pattern bounding box to exit.

Now your pattern is in the swatches panel

11

Create the SHAPE you want to fill with your pattern

And select your new pattern from the swatch panel.

YAYWIN!

12

Illustrator has many pre-made patterns that can be found in the SWATCHES LIBRARY

13

A new panel will appear with the swatch library.

When you choose a pattern swatch it will copy into the regular swatches panel.

14

If you want to modify a pre-made pattern double click on it from the SWATCHES panel, NOT the Swatch Library

The PATTERN OPTIONS panel will automatically open and you can now edit the pattern.

15

When you’ve finished editing it will update all instances where you have used the pattern.

If you want to keep your original pattern, you can make a copy and modify that.

Now both patterns are available for use, and any shapes filled with the original pattern will remain unchanged.

Select the pattern swatch

Click NEW SWATCH icon

OK

I hope you found this tutorial helpful!Please leave feedback and let me know if you find any

issues with clarity, or technical errors.