Simple, Quick Retro Floral Coordinates – Adobe Illustrator

Design touches everything we see and do. Being able to design for surfaces, and to be prolific, is important for success. Learning some key efficiency skills can contribute to your over-all ability to produce in a timely fashion. Another key skill you need is to be able to create coordinates and colourways. We will be using bold, unexpected color palettes woven with nostalgic tones from the ’60s and ’70s creating designs that are unique and engaging. Sound like fun?

I love the excitement of new creative ideas and playing with lots of different tools to make those ideas come to life! In this class I can’t wait to share all the things I know about shortcuts with Illustrator filters and functions, plus a bunch of little tidbits for designing a cohesive and beautifully co-ordinated collection! This class will arm you with all the knowledge necessary to design quick and simple coordinates to create your own complete fabric collection from scratch.

In this course,I’m sharing everything I’ve learned about making quick co-ordinates using filters and functions in Illustrator, hidden away in the menus. I’ll show you my step-by-step process, from my tricks to working with the filters, to creating full and complex patterns using functions like Pathfinder to do most of the work for us. We will design at least ten though the course of this class and I will give you plenty of ideas for creating alternates.

As far as prerequisite skills, I would recommend some knowledge of Illustrator with the goal of wanting to learn additional techniques. In class, we’ll talk about both design and technical aspects of creating simple and quick patterns. I will demonstrate them at a reasonable pace so that it will be easy to follow along. This course is for all levels; I recommend being acquainted with Illustrator to a certain degree. I suggest pausing and repeating sections and possibly even slowing the speed in your browser when trying to work through any difficult parts. Adobe Illustrator is recommended for this class, as that is what is being featured here, but any other draw (vector) software is suitable, as long as it has the same functionality.

The key concepts I will include are:

• review of several filters to distort and transform, like pucker and bloat, roughen and the zigzag filter

• methods to edit and deal with specific issues like divide, minus front, and exclude in the Pathfinder palette

• use of the pattern maker tool and all its settings

• many other considerations to do with designing repeating patterns efficiently

• experiments with the re-color tool in the last lesson

This course is packed with many tender morsels of information for you no matter at what stage you are in your design career. Take a chance and find out some fun little things you may never have seen or even thought of before! You can be applying this practical knowledge in your design practice tomorrow. Creating a pattern collection can be done relatively quickly with this small investment of your time. Let’s get at it! Hit your play button now!

Intro and Overview Simple, Quick Coordinates – Retro Floral

This short intro will give you an overview of the class. We will discuss retro patterns from the 60’s and 70’s with plenty of examples and resources for you to follow up on.

Lesson 2: Pucker, Bloat and Twist Filters

In this lesson, I will give you background on the production of the hero pattern, referencing back to the simple, fast folk art pattern produced in a previous class. Then we will review the pucker and bloat for producing motifs. Finally, I will show you the use of the twist filter for the first time in my classes.

Lesson 3: Pathfinder Tricks

In this lesson, we will take an in-depth look at the Pathfinder Tool. I also show you the use of offset path to create an alternate motif for a pattern. I explain best practices for its use as well as using it to help produce multiple patterns.

Lesson 4: Radial Duplication and Blending

I will give you some ideas for using functions like Illustrator Rotation and Blending to create some unique, alternate patterns. You will use the scissor tool here and learn new Illustrator keyboard shortcuts.

Lesson 5: Using Brushes to Make Patterns

There are at least 4 or 5 methods to create patterns with brushes in this unit. This will open up a whole new set of skills for you to be really creative in your co-ordinate pattern designs.

Lesson 6: Geometric Ideas for Coordinates

We will use Pathfinder and the Zig Zag Filter to produce some really funky co-ordinates based on some great reference from Pinterest. These ideas and techniques are sure to get your creative juices flowing!

Lesson 7: Roughened Stripe Pattern

We review the process of creating another pattern using the roughen filter; jagged stripes. You will also learn more advantages to using the Pathfinder Palette.

Lesson 8: Fun Experiments with the Re-Color Tool

I will give you a quick rundown of some of the functions of the Re-color Tool in this lesson. Stay tuned for the wrap-up where I will show you a couple applications of the patterns on a mockup.

Outro and Wrap-Up

I will summarize the class in this lesson and will show you a quick mockup incorporating a number of the patterns I produced.

Concepts covered:

Concepts covered include but are not limited to the pattern tool, the pucker and bloat filter, the twist filter, the roughen filter, offset path, the rotate tool, using pathfinder to create motifs, the zig zag filter, the blending tool, the scissor tool, the anchor point tool, Illustrator brushes for pattern design, pattern repeats, easy geometric patterns, easy floral patterns, creating stripes in Illustrator and much more.

You will get the bonus of…

• approx. one hour of direction from an instructor who has been in the graphic design business and education for over 40 years

• awareness of multiple approaches to resolve each design challenge

• handouts explaining key concepts

• a list of helpful online sites to further your education

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Frequently Asked Questions

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