5 Proven Ways to Improve your Surface Pattern Designs

In today’s blog post, I’m discussing 5 proven ways that you can improve your surface pattern designs. Even if you only concentrate on once of these areas, it will improve your designs and make them more cohesive, detailed and (hopefully) catch an Art Director’s eye when you come to pitching your work to them.

Summary:

1) Colour palette

2) Linework

3) Details

4) Scale

5) Motifs

1.Colour Palette

The colours you choose to use in your pattern designs is one of the BEST ways to make a design amazing. Think of some of the patterns you love and the colour will have been one of the things that initially drew you to like the pattern in the first place.

So what do I mean by a good colour palette?

• have a variety of light, medium and darker colours

• have 1-3 brighter, vivid colours (that make the design pop)

• have 1-3 neutral colours (think beige, cream, grey, white etc)

• have 1-2 muted, pastel colours

• have good contrast between the colours

• have a balanced colour palette (colours work well together as a group)

You can see the examples below of using the right colour palette for the type of pattern you’re designing for. The bottom example ticks most of the boxes of the list above and as a result would look great as a design for women clothing as the colours suit the floral elements used. Colour is KEY when it comes to making a pattern look great or not. Usually a pattern that isn’t working well design wise, if the colours are changed, it can be made to work better.

The top example showing the blue palette, still works ok, but not as great as the bottom example. Of course, there are some blue flowers in nature, but certainly not grey!

2. Linework

Linework is the type of lines you use in your design. Whether that’s thin or thick lines, dashed or dotted, wavy or straight, they all come under the umbrella of ‘linework’. How you draw your pattern motifs is very personal to you and your personal style so will be different for every person. When I’m drawing hand drawn motifs, I tend to opt for thicker lines around the edges and a mixture of thick and thin lines within a given shape. See the examples below to see what I mean. try to vary the thickness of lines within your design and it will give more interest and complexity.

3. Details

Details are the little things you add to your design to give it that extra wow factor. Think small geometric shapes in the background, details within shapes, or faint marks behind or in front of your motifs by changing the opacity.

There are many geometric shapes you can use, (I personally love circles) but you can add any that will improve the other all look of your design as well as making your design appear more professional and polished. Consider adding little shapes here and there to further add interest to your work, even if it’s just in the background of your patterns.

4. Scale of Motifs

The scale of your motifs is very important. you don’t want all of your motifs to be the same size, so vary them accordingly. In the example below you can see the white small circles that are in the background/ spaces between the florals. In the example on the left, they are smaller whereas on the right I have made them bigger and much more similar to the size of the rest of the motifs. It looks a little strange and doesn’t give off the same feel or make it look as interesting and they are more dominant in the design.

5. Motif Variation

The number of motifs you have in your design is also very important. Too few and your repeat tile will be very obvious, though too many and you risk your designs taking you too long to create, or the design being too small and the details too tiny to see as you try to fit them into the tile. I usually aim for at least 8, ideally 10-15 though it can also depend on the type of pattern you’r designing for too.

In the example above, I have 8 individual motif elements and this is the least I would opt for. This is quite a simple pattern so naturally doesn’t need as many motifs. However a hero pattern would include a lot more motifs in the realm of 12-15.

Well that wraps up today’s blog post. I hope you found it useful!

Reminder of what to focus on:

1) Colour palette

2) Linework

3) Geometric shapes

4) Scale

5) Motif quanity

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