Mastering PHP Design Patterns

The Gang of Four (GoF)

The architect Christopher Alexander, who mentioned how patterns can be used to address common design issues, originally documented the concept. The idea came about from Alexander; he proposes that design issues can be documented rigorously, alongside their proposed solution. Design patterns have most notably been applied to resolving architectural issues in software design.

In Christopher Alexander's own words:

"The elements of this language are entities called patterns. Each pattern describes a problem that occurs over and over again in our environment, and then describes the core of the solution to that problem, in such a way that you can use this solution a million times over, without ever doing it the same way twice." ...