In two previous Design a Digital Planner in Affinity Suite tutorials, we built the Live Repeat Pattern Preview template, for building seamless repeat surface pattern designs for our digital planner. At this point, the template is just a blank shell without any pattern elements. In this tutorial, we will create a simple dot repeat pattern using the Live Repeat Pattern Preview template. You will learn the following.

• Size and position motifs on the repeat pattern tile to create a dot pattern
• Color, resize or reposition the motifs for subsequent versions of the dot pattern
• Save your project in the default .afdesign format

What You Need: You will need the Live Repeat Pattern Preview template. Use the link below to go to the tutorial series Index page. There you will find the tutorials that will teach you how to make your own Live Repeat Pattern Preview template and save it as an Affinity Template.

About the Live Repeat Pattern Preview Template

This template has two Artboards, a small one for the pattern repeat tile and the larger one for the live preview (see screenshot). Right now the background layer in the smaller Pattern Tile Artboard is white, making it a simple white square tile, and we have placed 88 of these white tiles across the Live Preview Artboard. To make a pattern, we will replace the white background in the Pattern Tile Artboard with our design motifs. As the Pattern Tile Artboard is a Symbol, the new pattern design will be repeated 88 times across the Live Preview Artboard, creating our first dot repeat pattern.

Let's Get Started

1. Click File - New to open the New Document dialog. Select Templates on the left and double-click on the Live Repeat Pattern Preview template thumbnail, to open a new untitled copy in to Affinity Designer (see screenshot).


2. Open the Pattern Tile (Artboard) layer in the Layers panel and turn off the visibility for the Motifs (Rectangle) layer (see screenshot).

As we will be adding five pink circles to the Pattern Tile, let's change the background color for the Live Preview to white.


3. In the Layers panel, open the Live Preview (Artboard) layers and select the BG - Color or Image layer. Change the Fill and Stroke from black to white (FFFFFF) or the color of your choice in the Color panel (see screenshot).


4. In the Layers panel, select the Motifs (Rectangle) layer in the Pattern Tile (Artboard), to make it the active layer. Use the Ellipse tool to draw a circle in the center of the Canvas of the Pattern Tile Artboard. This new layer should appear just above the Motifs (Rectangle) layer in the Layers panel.


5. Set the Stroke to Null and the Fill to pink (E39FED) or the color of your choice in the Color panel.


6. In the Transform panel, select the center Anchor Point. Set the Width and Height of the circle to 120 pixels and the X and Y positions to 132 pixels, to center the circle on the Canvas (see screenshot).

You will see the pink circle added to every Symbol on the Canvas for the Live Preview (Artboard). That's our center shape but we want circles at each corner also (see screenshot).


7. In the Layers panel, right-click the Ellipse layer and choose Duplicate (see screenshot).


8. With the new (bottom) Ellipse layer selected, set the X and Y position values in the Transform panel to 0 pixels, to place the second circle at the upper left corner of the Canvas (see screenshot).


9. Repeat the previous steps three times to add a circle at each corner (see screenshot). Use the following X and Y values in the Transform panel.

Center Circle: X: 132 pixels, Y: 132 pixels
Top Left Corner: X: 0 pixels, Y: 0 pixels
Top Right Corner: X: 264 pixels, Y: 0 pixels
Bottom Right Corner: X: 264 pixels, Y: 264 pixels
Bottom Left Corner: X: 0 pixels, Y: 264 pixels

That's our dot pattern layout. Let's save it as an .afdesign design file.


10. Click File - Save As to save your pattern as a new document named Dot Seamless Repeat Pattern in the .afdesign file format.

You can use this new dot pattern layout to make several dot pattern variations just by starting a new project from the .afdesign file and changing the Fill color of the dots (see screenshot), adding a brush stroke, dashed or solid line to the Stroke (see screenshot), replacing the circles with a different motif or other variations.

Design a Digital Planner in Affinity Suite - Tutorial Series Index
More Affinity Suite Tutorials
Screenshots used by permission of Serif (Europe) Ltd. This article is not endorsed by Serif Ltd.

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