Creating a Patterns Library in Affinity Designer

In our latest post, we learned how to Create Seamless Patterns. Now, we’ll see how we can add actual functionality to these patterns, by using a simple trick to store these patterns and create our own library to use in any project.

So let’s dive in!

Work Files:

Get the image patterns used for this tutorial from this link: Frankentoon Demo Patterns.

Step 1: Save your Patterns

Using the same techniques shown in the mentioned tutorial, I made a few more patterns using simple elements I had laying around my hard drive. You can use whichever dimensions you need for each one, for these examples I used 600x600px Artboards.

At the moment you cannot create vector based patterns in Affinity Designer, so make sure you export these Artboards, with enough resolution to work with.

With all the Artboards ready, switch to Export Persona, select the Slices you want to export and click on the Export Slices button at the bottom of the Slices Panel. A file browser window will open, so you can select the location to store your images.

Step 2: Creating your library

Now, let’s make a New Document, use any size you prefer.

Create a new Rectangle to fill the whole document, select the Gradient Fill Tool and for the Fill Type, choose Bitmap.

From the browser window, select any of the patterns you’ve already exported and click Open.

Once you’ve imported your bitmap, don’t forget to select the Maintain fill aspect ratio option (Padlock icon) and from the Extend menu, select Wrap. We lock the aspect ratio of our image, in order to avoid deformations when resizing it. The Wrap option, creates a tiled fill. In this step we can also check if our pattern’s seams aren’t visible.

You can change the size of your pattern, using the handles of the Gradient Tool Fill, if you don’t want you pattern to rotate while resizing it, press the Shift key, while performing the transformation.

Once our pattern looks ok, open the Styles Panel. From the top-right menu, select Add New Category… to create a blank Styles Library and then, from the same menu, select Rename Category…

Then, while selecting your pattern, choose the option Add Style from Selection…

Repeat these steps for the rest of the patterns.

As easy as that, now you have a fully functional library of patterns you can use in any Document.

To save your brand-new library, just select the Export Styles… option.

And that’s it for today, I hope you’ve found this tutorial useful. Don’t forget to like and share this tutorials in any Affinity-related group or forum you’re in, so more people can learn these simple techniques and enhance their own workflow.