Follow this step by step Illustrator tutorial to create the popular
retro style pattern design made up of lots of colourful squares and
triangles. The process is pretty simple, making this a good tutorial for
newcomers to Adobe Illustrator. We’ll be using tools to accurately
align our elements, then see how the Pathfinder can easily create custom
shapes.
The
pattern we’ll be creating is this cool retro inspired somewhat mosaic
like design. The mix of squares and triangles along with the limited
colour palette attracts the eye with cool illusions.
Open
up Adobe Illustrator and create a new document. Select the Line tool
and draw a vertical line down the left border of the artboard, then hit
the Enter key to bring up the Move options. Enter 20mm in the Horizontal
field then click the Copy button.
Repeatedly press CMD+D to repeat the last transformation until the width of the artboard is filled with evenly spaced lines.
Repeat
the process, but this time with a horizontal line. In the Move options
window enter 20mm in the Vertical field then repeat the transformation
to fill with the artboard with a grid pattern.
Next,
draw a diagonal line at 45 degrees across the artboard. Be sure to make
this line long enough to cross the whole artboard, even at its widest
point.
Zoom right in and toggle outline mode (CMD+Y) and carefully align the diagonal line so it accurately intersects each grid point.
Hit
Enter to bring up the Move options and enter 20mm in both the
Horizontal and Vertical fields. Repeat the transformation to make
duplicates to cover the artboard.
Draw
a selection around all objects then hit the Divide option from the
Pathfinder tool palette. This will split all the lines into individual
shapes.
Right
click and select Ungroup to split up the objects then draw a selection
and delete any shapes beyond the edge of the artboard.
Now let’s add some colour! First we’ll need a basic palette to work from, here I’ve picked out a mix of greens/blues from ColourLovers.com.
Begin by randomly selecting a bunch of shapes while holding the Shift
key, then add the colour fill using the Eyedropper tool on your
temporary swatch.
Continue selecting empty shapes then give them a colour fill using the next swatch in the palette.
As more colours are added the design really starts to take shape…
…until
eventually the whole design is filled with colour. Make any adjustments
if there’s any dense areas of a single colour, or sparse areas that
lack one of the other swatches.
The
pattern itself is complete, but it wouldn’t be a Chris Spooner design
tutorial without a texture overlay! Copy and paste the design into
Photoshop and open up a texture file.
Desaturate the image and set the blending mode to Soft Light, then
adjust the opacity to tone down the effect of the texturing.
The
texture overlay just helps add that tactile feel to the design to help
remove the flat appearance of digital graphics. The uses for this kind
of pattern are endless, it could be the base of a business card design, a
skateboard deck design or even just as a printed poster.
REFERANCE : spoongraphics
