Making and using pattern swatches in Vectornation by Zaweba

Repeating designs turn up everywhere: wrapping paper, fabric, tiles, website backgrounds, packaging, the texture on a map. Vectornation by Zaweba handles them as pattern swatches, which fill a shape with a tile repeated in a grid, brick or hex layout, and it comes with five pattern libraries to start from.

Pattern swatches

A pattern swatch works like a colour swatch, except that instead of one colour it fills a shape with a repeating tile. Apply it to any shape and the repeat fills it exactly, edge to edge. Change the shape and the pattern simply fills the new outline, because the repeat belongs to the fill rather than being drawn as hundreds of separate copies. That keeps files light and editing easy.

Grid, brick and hex

Grid repeats the tile in straight rows and columns, the plain layout for checks, dots, simple geometric repeats and icon patterns. Brick offsets each row by part of a tile, as in a brick wall, which breaks up the obvious lines of a grid and makes many motifs feel more natural, particularly florals and scattered shapes. Hex arranges tiles in a honeycomb, which suits hexagonal designs, scales, tightly packed circles and anything where a six-way repeat looks right.

The layout changes the feel of a pattern a great deal. The same leaf motif can look formal on a grid, relaxed on a brick, and dense and organic on a hex. If a repeat looks too mechanical, try another layout before redrawing the tile.

The bundled libraries

Under Swatches > Patterns there are five bundled pattern libraries. They are a quick source of backgrounds and textures when you need one and don't have time to design your own, and they are also useful to study: opening a ready-made pattern shows you how its tile is built to repeat cleanly, which helps when you make your own.

Designing a good repeat

Start with the tile. Keep the motif simple at first and check the edges, because a repeat is only as good as the place where one tile meets the next. Look for unintended lines or clusters that appear when the tile repeats; a dark shape near one edge can line up with the same shape in the next tile and form a stripe you didn't mean. Small adjustments to the tile, or switching from grid to brick, usually solve it.

Use a limited palette. Patterns with too many colours tend to look busy at a distance. Global swatches help here, since changing one global colour recolours every use of it in the pattern too, so you can try colourways quickly. For larger colour changes across a whole design, Recolour artwork is quicker still.

Patterns in real jobs

For print, check the pattern at its real printed size; a fine motif that looks lovely zoomed in can turn to mush on paper. Use the Print area tool to print a section at full size on your own printer. For screen use, look at it in Pixel preview at 100%. For packaging, think about where the pattern meets folds and edges, and whether it needs to line up across panels.

With pattern swatches, three layouts and a few libraries to start from, Vectornation covers most of the repeating design work that illustrators and packaging designers meet day to day.