Adobe Illustrator CC Digital Classroom

Lesson 7: Using Patterns

 

You can easily create patterns in Illustrator and with some simple tweaking, you can rotate, scale, and reposition your patterns. In this lesson, you are introduced to the Pattern Options panel.

What you’ll learn in this lesson:

• • How to create a pattern
• • Editing a pattern
• • Using the Pattern Options panel

Starting up

Before starting, make sure that your tools and panels are consistent by resetting your workspace. See “Resetting Adobe Illustrator CC Preferences” in the Starting up section of this book.

You will work with several files from the ai07lessons folder in this lesson. Make sure that you have loaded the ailessons folder onto your hard drive from www.digitalclassroombooks.com/epub/illustratorcc. See “Loading lesson files” in the Starting up section of this book.

The Pattern Options panel makes creating patterns more manageable

Many designers and illustrators create patterns in Illustrator on a daily basis, but working with them in previous versions of the program was cumbersome at best. It was easy enough to create your objects, define the pattern, and then apply the pattern swatch to your illustration. But if you wanted to to edit the pattern it was difficult, and lining up a tiled repeat using a pattern swatch was often frustrating. In this lesson, you create a pattern and then edit it using the Pattern Options panel.

Creating a pattern ...