Creating and working with patterns

To create a pattern, you create artwork you want to use as a pattern and then drag the artwork to the Swatches palette or use the Edit > Define Pattern command. You can use paths, compound paths, or text with solid fills or no fill for a pattern, or you can design a pattern from scratch with any of the tools in the Adobe Illustrator program. (However, you cannot use patterns, gradients, blends, brushstrokes, meshes, bitmap images, graphs, placed files, or masks in a pattern.) You can customize any pattern by resizing the pattern, moving or transforming it, or coloring its objects.

Patterns intended for filling objects (fill patterns) differ in design and tiling from patterns intended to be applied to a path with the Brushes palette (brush patterns). For best results, use fill patterns to fill objects and brush patterns to outline objects.

Related Subtopics:

How patterns tile
Constructing simple patterns and defining patterns
Guidelines for constructing patterns
Constructing geometric patterns
Constructing patterns with irregular textures
Creating corner tiles for brush patterns
Modifying patterns
Moving patterns
Transforming pattern-filled objects