Design Practice: Image... Book Works... Pattern Making

Pattern Making

I think the next step now is to try out making some patterns. This is something I'm really interested in, but haven't done much of before, except from following some simple tutorials for background for my last module. I want to be able to make quite a few patterns so I can be picky about which ones I will choose for the book. I'm really excited about making these and I know what I want to do so I hope it works.

Here are some basic shapes I have drawn on illustrator, and I am using colours from the pastel pantone swatch pallet. My first thought is that these colours would look good on parcel paper. I don't think I'll use all the colours in one design as this will look too primary school like! I want to make sure the patterns are fashionable and not childish.

I really liked this pattern, but thought something was missing, so played around with adding colour. I think I could play around with this style for ages so will have another go later.

Here is another attempt. I have been making the patterns in rough first to get a design I like, then measuring them up neatly and deciding on colour schemes.

This next pattern looks a bit different because I have altered the opacity and blending mode. However, I'm really happy with the effect I ended up with, so I might go back and change the opacity in my previous patterns.

I don't know if this pattern is a bit too much as it contains too many different shapes and colours, so I might have to make it a bit simpler if I decide to use it, but I am having a lot of fun creating patterns so I will make loads so I have lots of choices.

This idea is inspired by a business card I have which I have referenced on my design context blog, with a triangle made up of different triangles. I tried this with different shaped triangles.

I then played around with making a pattern from these triangles, this is what I have come up with, and I like how it looks 3d. I need to make it neat and accurate and experiment with colour now.

I tried a few different colour schemes, but in the end, decided to stick with this. Here is a neatened version.

Here I've created a flower shape with diamonds, I want to be careful not to make it to fair-isle knit looking though.

While I think this works on its own, I don't think it would make a good pattern. I might use it but I don't want to make the book look too girly, although it is aimed at girls. This is because most of my work ends up looking really girly!

Here is another idea, this time using one colour but altering the opacity of different areas.

I've added another colour on top as I thought it was lacking something!

Looking through the patterns I've made, most seem to be with triangles, so I wanted to try something with the other shapes. This is made with octagons.

Not really liking this pattern so I think I will scrap it and move on!

Another idea for a pattern, but using a blue and green colour scheme, rather than the purple and pink scheme I've used on most so far.

I really like this pattern, because of how the different elements are layered on top to create new colours due to the blending mode. I like how the colours are so different from the other patterns.

Here I was trying to create something through the use of lines.

I found inspiration through my design context research to create a similar image using triangles.

Im happy with this result and think it works well as a repeated pattern.

Playing around with other shapes, but I think this looks too girly.

Experimenting with using all the colours in one pattern and not altering the opacity.

Here I've created quite a few random patterns, which contain as many shapes and colours as possible. As these are just thrown together, they probably shouldn't work but I think they do.