The brick repeat: The French Art Deco design of 1925

In this exercise you will reproduce the 1925 French Art Deco design from Peter Phillips and Gillian Bunce, Repeat Patterns: A Manual for Designers, Artists and Architects, Thames and Hudson, 1993, London, p. 91. Alternatively you can work on a pattern of your choice.

1 Start from the motif in the file ArtDeco1925.ai, which accompanies this tutorial, or from any other motif.

2 Click Brick in the Layout list in the SymmetryWorks palette.

3 Select all objects in the artwork (for example, using Select All from the Edit menu) and click the Make button in the SymmetryWorks palette.

4 By default, SymmetryWorks makes the brick repeat with the 1/2 shift. To change the default to the 1/3 shift required for this pattern, double-click the SymmetryWorks tab several times until the optional part of the palette becomes visible (or choose Show Options from the pop-up menu in the SymmetryWorks palette). Then choose 1/3 from the Constrain Shift pop-up list.

5 Because the pattern looks congested with overlapping units of repetition, you need to increase the repeat size. Make sure that the pattern is still selected and click the Select Control Path button in the SymmetryWorks palette.

Printer-friendly PDF 140 KB

FrenchTextile1800.ai ArtDeco1925.ai 324 KB 256 KB

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