Recently Blue Frog asked me to start a thread of visual design tips. This is to help people with creating seamless patterns. This thread is for all designers, not just me. So please feel free to contribute your own tips and tricks.

I will start with the rule of odds. Certain types of graphic designs use odd numbers to add lightness and lyrical movement. Here is a beautiful design by mcmp. You will notice she also varied the size and placement of the leaves.

Nature often displays things in odd numbers. There are more three leaf clovers than four, etc...

We do not consciously recognize odd groupings. But our subconscious enjoys the playful balance.

Using odd numbers is not applicable in every design. Maybe you want a sequential, regulated quilt pattern. Why not make it five quilt squares wide instead of four? Or color the squares in odd number groupings? If you have one left over, make it a unique color. One is still an odd number! It's more fun.

If your design is intentionally symmetrical you can still add a playful element with odd dots and stars.

I hope that helps and does not confuse any one. You should experiment with this and see if it works on a small scale. Using 3's, 5's, etc... And look for instances in art and nature where you do find odd numbers at work.

Thanks!

CP
Update: Here is an example of a pattern by LauraG that uses the rule of thirds.

Some technical tips: Use the shift key
Holding down the shift key while resizing an element scales it uniformly without distortion.
Holding down the shift key while rotating an element rotates it 45 degree increments.
Holding down the shift key while selecting multiple elements creates a temporary grouping that you can move, stretch, rotate, clone, etc as one unit.

Thank you Bunigrl33. Those are excellent tips!

great topic, very useful tips.
i would like to add the links to two of my favourite tutorials for making seamless patterns
Creating patterns in Photoshop CS2 by Veerle Pieters and Creating seamless patterns in Illustrator by Veerle Pieters
of course we don't have the tools of Illustrator or Photoshop, but i think the principles are the same when making patterns here as well.
for example, take a look at these pictures:


"Just make sure that each shape on either side is still the same, so that in the end the pattern will match seamlessly."

Thank you divebombjingle!

You can name your layers: just double click on the name (e.g., Layer 1) and retype. It's invaluable when working on a complex pattern, or in working with clones that you want to treat as separate objects.

You can use the arrow keys (up, down, left, right) to nudge an object by a small amount. Helps to get objects precisely aligned, which is a bit difficult in Seamless.

Oh, thank you gme. I tried naming layers many times, but probably gave up too soon. Great tip!

I haven't had any luck trying to rename objects or groups but I did discover two nifty tools by accident.

There is a slider bar in the upper right-hand corner that resizes the repeat area to control the scale of the pattern (this was a wishlist item of mine, maybe it was there the whole time & I didn't notice).

Holding down the shift key while dragging an object will restrict your movement to the horizontal and vertical axes.

Thank you buni. I discovered the zoom tool too. But remember that when you publish your pattern will be smaller than it is in the zoomed size. This pattern crunched down a lot because I forgot I was zoomed in while making it.

Till the seamless tool has no grids sometimes I make them by myself. I create a square, copy it, move the copies (via the arrow-keys to stay in the line), resize them all together (marked with "shift" or "control" to get them all, resized with "shift" to keep the proportions), repeat these steps till I have a grid. After I'm done I delete all the square copies again. It's a bit tedious but it works.

That is a fantastic tip Stfn!

i was thinking how i would be helped to make a pattern if only there were rulers or a grid. so i made a search at google for a virtual grid or a ruler that can do the job. it turns out there are some neat software programs for virtual rulers. i've already installed one and i'm hoping to make my first decent pattern by the end of the week

divebomb,
can you post a link to the tool you found?

hi bunigrl
the tool is called "clever ruler" and you can find plenty of download links with a google search (it's not difficult for me to post one, but it's better you decide)
the pros are
it can stay on top of other applications and it can be both vertical and horizontal
it has this small window where it shows the area where your mouse's cursor is zoomed in
by right clicking on the ruler, you get a menu where you can make your choices
the cons are
it's shareware so most of its features are disabled
the zoom in window doesn't stay on top of other applications so what i do is resize the browser window and leave a small space for the zoom

for someone like me, it works just fine, but the best thing is for the seamless maker to have its own grid and rulers, maybe in the next version.

I bought the full version of this product and like it. The specific reasons I got it are:

-- It can rotate a full 360˚ ( my previous screen ruler could not)
-- you can set the units of measurement to pixels, inches, or centimeters (my old ruler was limited to pixels; not much help when designing something to be printed)
-- you can change the length of the ruler (my old one was fixed at 800 pixels wide and and (?) 425 high).

Just a little "Consumer Reports" type of information :^)

I usually create a grid with dotted lines spaced every ten, twenty, fifty spaces. However wide I want. The window is 100 px wide and 100 px tall. I keep those layers on the bottom of the pattern.

Then I create square of pure white that fills the whole box. I move that layer up and down to show or not show the underlying grid lines. Then delete all the unneeded layers when done. It's a lot of work and your tool sounds easier. I'm posting my own link here to cnet just so I can come back to it later.

I found a workaround for the problem that happens when you make templates with less then 5 colors: when you try to color them from a palette there are problems, first is that your 5th (or 4th or 3rd) color disappears so you can't drag and drop it around anymore, second is that the color order in the pattern isn't really connected to the one you chose. Anyway, what you can do is: Create layers in the unused (3rd/4th/5th) gray-shades and hide them under the existing layers of the pattern. The coloring-tool will think that you are coloring a 5th color palette and you won't have any quirks. The colored results will look the same of cause :)