Hello everyone this is Chris from Spoon Graphics
back with another tutorial for Adobe Illustrator.
Today I'm going to show you how to create a geometric pattern using tessellating triangle
shapes with a randomised colour scheme.
This detailed mosaic effect is ideal for adding colourful background to your designs, or even
as interesting abstract poster art.
I'll share a secret that helps to dramatically speed up the process by randomly adding colour
fills to each shape automatically.
And keep watching to see how this pattern can be processed to seamlessly repeat across
an infinite area.
If you're in need of a geometric pattern like this for a project, check out the links in
the description to some ready-made pattern resources that include a variety of geometric
pattern styles.
For around $20 you can get every different pattern effect you could imagine... The Essential
Vector Geometric Patterns pack from Design Dell alone contains 650 pattern options!
To create this particular triangular pattern effect, open Adobe Illustrator and create
a new document.
Find the Polygon tool, then click on the artboard to enter specific values. Set 6 sides to create
a hexagon.
Activate the Move tool and rotate the hexagon by 90 degrees while holding shift to keep
the angle constrained.
Make sure you have Smart Guides enabled from under the View menu. These little tooltips
make it easy to snap to points and align things up.
Select the Line tool and draw lines between all the points of the hexagon, connecting
each opposite side.
Draw a selection around everything with the Move tool, then click the Divide option in
the Pathfinder panel to segment the shape into several triangle shapes.
Hold the ALT and Shift keys while dragging the shape to make a copy. Position the copy
so the two overlap vertically.
Repeatedly press the CMD+D shortcut (or CTRL+D on Windows) for Transform again, to extend
the triangular pattern vertically.
Select the entire column of shapes, then hold the ALT key while dragging a copy off to the
side. Align it perfectly so they sit side by side.
Repeatedly press the CMD+D shortcut again to fill out the pattern horizontally.
The larger you go, the less repetition you will see when this pattern is made to seamlessly
repeat later.
Make a selection of all the shapes, then right click and choose Ungroup.
This is a good time to save the document because we'll be installing a Script that is required
to randomly fill each of these shapes.
Follow the link in the description to download the RandomSwatchesFill script.
Navigate to your Illustrator files, which on a Mac is under the Applications > Adobe
> Adobe Illustrator > Presets > Scripts directory. On windows that's under Program Files.
Drop the RandomSwatchesFill.js file in there, then quit and relaunch Illustrator.
We also need a colour scheme to use for our pattern design. I'm using a palette from Adobe
Color named Supernova. You can download the ASE file from the link in the description.
Load it via the Swatches panel menu under Open Swatch Library > Other Library > Then
navigate to the downloaded file.
Click the colour group in the panel that appears to load it into the Swatches panel.
Draw a selection across the entire pattern, then activate the colour palette group in
the swatches panel. Go to File > Scripts > RandomSwatchesFill to have the pattern automatically filled with
the colours from the swatch selection.
Clear out the default black stroke to leave just the colour fills, or alternatively, try
white for a different effect.
If for whatever reason you don't want to use the Random Fill script, it is still possible
to create this effect, it's just much more of a tedious process.
To fill the colours yourself, hold the shift key and randomly select several triangles.
Give these shapes the first fill colour from the palette.
To avoid selecting these items again, go to Object > Lock > Selection, or use the CMD+2
shortcut.
Select more shapes and give them the next fill from the palette, lock them and continue
selecting.
Cycle through the colours until every single shape has been filled. The result will be
exactly the same, except it has taken considerably more human processing power than the automatic
script.
Should you want to turn this pattern into a seamlessly repeating pattern swatch, there's
just a couple more steps.
Select the rectangle tool and draw a shape that covers the majority of the pattern, snapping
to points within the artwork.
Draw a selection around everything, then click the Crop button from the Pathfinder panel.
If you give this pattern a quick test by duplicating it to the side, you will see it repeats nicely
horizontally, but vertically the triangles are split in half by an obvious line.
To fix this, right click and choose Ungroup to break the shapes apart. Then select each
shape along the top or bottom edge and sample the same fill colour as the shape on the opposite
side.
Test the pattern again to see it now repeats seamlessly vertically too.
Select everything and drag the design into the Swatches panel to save it. This pattern
swatch can now be applied as a fill to any shape. It will repeat to cover an infinite
area.
You can also make adjustments using the Object > Transform > Scale menu. Deselect the Transform
Objects option so the scaling only applies to the pattern effect.
This detailed geometric pattern effect can be used with all kinds of designs, such as
posters, packaging, branding, or even just as abstract art.