Betabrand, an online-only clothing company that produces limited-edition batches of clothing and accessories, recently paired up with COLOURlovers in the contest, Color-A-Plaid Shirt Contest by Betabrand + COLOURlovers. The contest turned out to be a huge success with over 5,000 entries!

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To enter the contest, COLOURlovers simply had to color a pre-picked plaid pattern - Betabrand2, which had been created by one of our very own Lovers, sec9586. After coloring the pattern it produced a plaid shirt mockup of the finished product.

VOTE HERE AT BETABRAND

The contest is closed and nine finalists were chosen by the Betabrand design team. Voting on these nine selections will be open until NOON (12pm PST) Monday, August 22, 2011.

The Finalists

Betabrand chose the finalists not by the amount of LOVES each pattern/palette got. Simply because this would have been unfair. COLOURlovers had added the ability to LOVE the designs and share them for the fun of the contest.

"Our design team narrowed it down to 9 finalists not based on the number of loves on Colourlovers - because patterns that were created at the beginning of the contest would have an unfair advantage to those created toward the end. As for not picking a winner, but rather narrowing it down to 9, we decided to do that because we were so thrilled with the volume and quality of submissions that we wanted to keep the love going!" - Jared @ Betabrand

The nine finalists in no particular order...

Hipster Plaid by bcrider

cloud nine by martino

*colour hunter* by Sunny21327

Using patterns in print design can really punch up a project. It's nothing new, but I'd like to point out a few different variations you might see as key benefits.

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Single Use Design Pieces

Simplify a project by using patterns. In this design, the abstract pattern with the perfect color palette, truly resembles a feel for the arts. It doesn't restrict the design to a certain type of art where the festival might cover anything from painting, sculpting, fiber arts and more. Using an artistically geared pattern keeps that visual open.

Print Magazine's, Color in Design Awards (2011) / Poster Design by Dave Whitley

Coordinating Design Pieces

Using patterns in coordinating print projects can easily lend a hand in matching sets of items such as wedding invitations which usually contain a main element, the invitation - plus response cards, enclosure cards, save the date cards and thank you cards. Not to mention possibly following through with the design on wedding day programs, seat placement cards, etc.

autumn textile by weddingpaperdivas.com

Reusable & Customizable Design Pieces

When working with products you want buyers to customize, simple two-color patterns make it easy to do so. This makes it a snap for you to go in and adjust the pattern palette before shipping a digital file or physical product off to a client.

Tea Invitation by FLIPAWOO (customizable pattern invitations)

No matter what type of print project you have, these are a few benefits to using patterns to speed up your design or business process, not to mention a great way to add a ton of interest in your work.

Using COLOURlovers Patterns in your designs...

Here at COLOURlovers you can download an .SVG file of your pattern designs as long as you were the original Pattern Template creator. Additionally, if you have Seamless Studio, you can export designs as: .SVG, .JPG or .PNG to be able to use in other graphics software for design.

The Giveaway - How to Earn Your $75

This is a random giveaway picked from those who leave a comment. You have two choices:

Link to and place an image of a project you have designed with patterns. This can be from a yesterday or today, real or fake and must be a complete looking project. Does it fall under one of the three examples above?

OR

Link to and place an image of a print piece or pieces (such as a wedding invitation set) you adore and think is a prime example of one of the above three examples.

In addition, I'd love to know why you like using patterns in your design or why you like seeing patterns in design.

Entries will be collected through Sunday, August 28th, 2011 (by midnight PST). 

Next Day Flyers, the postcard printing specialists will be providing gift a credit of $75 to the randomly selected winner!

***THIS CONTEST IS OVER***

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Introducing...PLYWERK, an eco-conscious photo mounting and art panel company based in Portland Oregon. They work with professional artists, photographers, interior designers, point and shoot photographers, parents, and everyone in between!

Art pieces are a made up of your print adhered to a Plywerk Panel to create a beautifully natural piece of wall art. Gorgeous bamboo or maple are offered for the wood options.

Plywerk Anatomy 101

Bamboo & Maple Plywerk Panels

COLOURlovers has recently become a Pro Partner of PLYWERK. Why is this super notable to mention? Because you're going to get the best, most amazing deals ever when you create an account (which is free). These deals are customized to COLOURlovers Members Only under the Prodeal membership (which is also free). Pretty sweet huh?

Have you ever wanted to apply your color design abilities to a real-life product? Well here's your big opportunity! Rev up your color coordination skills and become the next palette designer for a plaid shirt offered through Betabrand! You'll get the unique opportunity to color a plaid pattern, see the design in action (applied to a template shirt) and the possibility of having your colors picked for print. How cool is that?!

Betabrand is an online-only clothing company based in San Francisco that produces unique designs in limited-edition batches every week. They make Cordarounds, Japants, DARPA hoodies, Farmer's Market backpacks, disco pants, and much, much more.

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Ready, Set, Contest Time!

We've had our very own, sec9586 create a pattern template for a new plaid flannel shirt that Betabrand plans to release in two versions for the 2011 holiday season. Betabrand has already chosen the colors for one version - the other is up to you!

How it works...

Easy, color the Betabrand plaid pattern template, Betabrand2.

Your colored pattern will automatically appear with the rest of the entries on the contest gallery page. You may color as many versions of the pattern template as you like.

If your colors are chosen...

The Betabrand design team will select one winner, who'll receive the following:

• - A real-life finished plaid flannel shirt;
• - Your COLOURlovers user name on the shirt label (for this 2011 production run - see above image);
• - $100 Betabrand Gift Card;
• - Recognition on the Betabrand web site and in all company communications; this includes photo of the winner in his/her winning shirt (optional).

The contest runs August 2nd - 11th (2011). Anyone who submits an entry will receive a coupon code for 20% OFF any Betabrand product - offer only valid during the contest timeline.

View the Contest Gallery

Color this plaid pattern template to enter (Betabrand2)

What we love more than anything is helping people share their ideas & inspirations. A couple years ago we added the ability for members to color in 100 preset pattern templates and we saw your creativity flourish, but we also saw an even greater opportunity... To give you all the power to design your own pattern templates!

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And without being able to save your work, import your own custom shapes, work only in grayscale... and with only our simple web version of Seamless, in the past 12 months our awesome members created more than 80,000 original seamless patterns.

So it's with great excitement for the amazing creations that will be shared that we release the more powerful desktop version of Seamless Studio!

Special COLOURlovers Member Price

And as a special thank you to all our supportive members here at COLOURlovers, we're giving you a $20 discount on the regular price of $49, just for being a member. Thanks for Sharing the Love!

A Showcase of Amazing Seamless Patterns

It truly is magical what you all are able to create using simple shapes and only 5 colors... Check out the Showcase to see some examples of the wonderful patterns being created with Seamless Studio. Or check it out for yourself, Download a FREE 15 Day Trial of Seamless Studio...

Beautiful, Easy to Use & Affordable

Existing pattern design tools & software were expensive, hard to use & not much fun to play with. So as part of our mission to make design super easy and accessible to everyone, we made a beautiful, user friendly & affordable vector pattern design app. These are just some of the features we packed into Seamless Studio:

Import Custom Shapes
Open SVGs from other editors to use in your patterns.

Export to Other Formats
Save your pattern as a SVG, PNG, or JPG image.

Layers / Groups
Organize and rearrange shapes simply.

Save / Open
Create projects and come back to them later.

Easy Upload
Upload your patterns straight to COLOURlovers.com.

Line Tool
Create wavy, sawtooth, straight, dashed, and dotted lines.

Infinitely Scalable
Export SVGs that scale beautifully to any resolution.

& More...
 

Start Sharing Your Patterns with the World!

Not only can you publish your patterns right to COLOURlovers.com from the app, you can also export your patterns as high res files to use in your own creative projects. Upload them to Spoonflower to get custom fabric! Print them out and sell them as part of a craft pack on Etsy! Turn a pattern into beautiful wall art with Imagekind! ...Woohoo!

Many of you know about our COLOURlovers iPhone App - ColorSchemer Touch, but do you know all you can do with it? I wanted to do a quick highlight of all it's features, so let's get down to it!

At this point in development, ColorSchemer Touch allows you to do the following:

Peruse COLOURlovers current Palette Creations... tapping once on a palette will bring you to the Palette information.

Palette Information includes author, loves, views, comments, rank and when it was created along with the colors used.

Full Screen - To get a bigger and more beautiful show all this palette has to offer, just tap on it (again in the information screen) and it will expand full screen. WOW!

Color information includes the COLOURlovers original titles as the default display.

Just tap once over the color area to display the Hex Values for each color, tap again to see the RGB values and another tap brings you back to the original titles.

Creating Palettes in So Many Ways!

There are so many cool tools for creating your own palettes!

• - Use the standard color wheel
• - Play around with LiveSchemes (which may need it's very own post to cover how cool it is)
• - Use PhotoSchemer to grab colors from photos you have on your iPhone (or take a new photo).
• - Or use the Spectrum

And Yes, you can make palettes with varying widths!

When you're done making a palette, why not share it?!

I'll end with answering some questions that might or have already come up...

• - Yes, we're hoping to develop an Android version at some point in the future.
  
• - Yes, eventually it will have more COLOURlovers site features on it (such as perusing patterns!).

The Grand Giveaway!

WeI'd like to give away FIVE copies of ColorSchemer Touch! Tell us how you would use the app if you had a copy and how much you dearly want it. :)

If you already own it, please feel free to let us know how you use it!

You have until Friday, July 22nd, 2011. Entries will stop at 1pm (USA PST).

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Very exciting! - We've been working hard on a much-improved desktop version of the Seamless pattern-maker called Seamless Studio. Sponsored members of the community have been helping us test the beta and now we're opening up the beta to everybody else! We'd love your thoughts and feedback on the new app.

Download the Seamless Studio Beta Here:
http://docs.colourlovers.com/seamless-studio/install

Here’s some of the stuff we think you'll love in the new Seamless Studio:
* Save and open your templates as you're working on them
* Build your own custom shape libraries
* Import external shapes
* Upload templates directly to COLOURlovers
* Preview your COLOURlovers template in color
* Create patterns with unlimited colors
* Design on custom canvas sizes

Documentation and help sections for things like "Understanding the Interface", "Document Modes", "Custom Shapes" & more can be found here: Seamless Studio Documentation & Help

Get On The Seamless Notification List: Be the first to know when the full version launches!

*A Note on Importing Shapes with Seamless Studio*

With how talented our members are, it’s hard to know when they used their amazing talents to create a custom shape.. or when they imported a vector shape from another source.

It’s ok to import shapes from other creators when you have the appropriate permissions to do so. Please do not upload pattern templates that include imported shapes / images that are copyrighted. If you use shapes that are licensed with a creative common license, please link the source in the description. Unattributed pattern templates that include copyrighted content will be removed.

*How To Help Us Beta Test*

Once you've had a chance to play with the app, we'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback.

Just copy and paste the text below into a love note to COLOURlover or email to love@colourlovers.com and send it along with your thoughts:

=======================================
Seamless Studio Beta Feedback
=======================================
Your name:

Your occupation:

Operating Systems tested:

Seamless Studio Feedback:
----------------------------
* Describe any problems encountered during installation:

* Describe your initial impressions of Seamless Studio:

* What features/tools, if any, did you find to be confusing or difficult to use?

* What new features do you like most about Seamless Studio?

* What do you think could be improved?

* Describe any problems or bugs encountered while testing Seamless Studio:

* Would you recommend Seamless Studio to a friend? Why or why not?

* What are the first 3 words that pop into your head when you think of Seamless Studio?

* How often do you use Seamless Studio?

* What other software programs do you use on a regular basis?

* Please describe any additional comments regarding Seamless Studio:

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Since society seems to be moving at an ever-increasing speed towards going all digital, the thumb drive is like the file folder of the past, except more compact and much more stylish. Retailers have cashed in on the market for people's desire to have cool gadgets in their pockets, and you can find all manner of interesting flash device out there.

However, when you combine storage space with something like an MP3 player, ask your favorite designers to come in and finish it off with a great look, you may just find you have a product on your hands that really catches people's attention. Such is the case with Mugo, a line created by Aaron Atchison that features big name artists such as Julie West, Shin Tanaka, Jon Burgerman and more.

There are plenty of companies out there providing a way for you to get a cool case for all your devices be it the iPhone, iTouch, Blackberry and so on. IMakeMyCase, a side job of case-mate.com,  is no exception in that they are also a provider of cool cases, yet their concept is wildly unique - they collaborate with world-class artists and musicians to produce some pretty rock'n designs.

Not only does IMakeMyCase provide case designs from top artists in both the music and art industries, but they provide a unique experience where you can use design pieces of a particular artist's collection of style to be the designer yourself.

How it works:

I decide to go with the work of Chuck Anderson of NoPattern.com.

After I pick the artist I want to go with, the animation zooms me down to Chuck Anderson's Design Studio where you can either make a custom design based on Chuck's artwork and inspirational style or I can simply buy a pre-made Chuck Anderson case (pre-designed by Chuck - "what would chuck do?").

2. 1) Start with a Background
3. 2) Add design Elements
4. 3) Mess around with design elements like mirroring them, changing colors or totally warping the design elements with the kaleidoscope tool.

When you first start designing you might feel limited with some of the artwork and tools, but actually the secret lies in laying a few things out and then completely mauling it with the Mirror, Colors and Kaleidoscope tools - many times over.

Welcome to The Design Minute, a new feature on the COLOURlovers blog where we take a quick look at an inspired design, whether it be on a canvas, a t-shirt, a billboard or a passing elephant, and have a quick chat with the artist behind it. Today's design is called Color Wheel, and it can currently be found at ultra-cool t-shirt design site Threadless. Creator Ross Zietz has a few other designs under his belt, but this one was perfect for our color-obsessed readers (and yes, I'm talking to you).

COLOURlovers: Give us three words that you feel best describe this design.

Ross: vivid, bicycle, kaleidoscope-ish.

COLOURlovers: Do you have a current favorite Threadless design? If so, what is it?

Ross: Dead Pirate by McBess. Nice and Simple. Sorry it's not too colorful but it's the one I wear the most.

COLOURlovers: You have to create a design in under five minutes, using only words to describe it. Go.

Ross: Ha... A wide open shark jaw, just the two jaw parts (top and bottom)... The teeth look like normal sharp shark teeth from afar but when you look closer at them, you realize that they are actually sails to a bunch of tiny sailboats. I think i'm actually going to design this tonight!