Twist Surface Pattern Design by Colin Walton at WaltonCreative

Twist Surface Pattern Design

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Twist Pattern Design

Swatches showing the different stages of the design. Click or rollover to see more details.

Origins Of Twist Pattern Design

Twist is based on curving ribbons of varying widths. Specifically created to produce a more feminine pattern design.

Twist Pattern Development

First sketch of Ribbons in Illustrator – now renamed Twist.
A – first pattern repeat. The squares are too dominant and there are odd gaps.
B – ribbon colours at 100% – too strong. Obvious pattern repeat.
C – ribbons set to 80% look better, but perhaps too busy.
D – ribbons changed to varying thickness, but odd blue curving element.
E – more balanced but the background looks too busy still.
E+ – getting better, but still need to hide some elements.
F – hide unwanted ribbons which looks better but having blue ribbons throughout is restrictive.
G – final design. The darker ribbon is set to mid grey with the transparency set to Overlay, which converts it to a darker shade of the chosen background colour. The lighter ribbon is set to Screen, which converts it to a lighter shade of the chosen background colour.

Colour Combinations

All of the designs shown here are chosen from Twist designs F and G. Following the code is a swatch reference number from 0 to 41, where 0 = white and 41 is bright cyan.

Placing The Pattern In A Location

To give context I combined a selection of finished designs with a straight-on shot of the chair used in my design for Mid Century Modern Chairs. Adding a fake carpet and simple skirting board. For every image I altered the colour of the real chair to complement the surface wallpaper. For each design I also created a simple version that was just the pattern, to show how the design could be used for fabric, wrapping paper, and other surfaces.

Creating This Page

With so many colour combinations it would be impractical to show all of them. Here I have chosen a selection of combinations that I feel are interesting. Smaller screen sizes are designed to display less colour examples.

The Future

The pattern would work for wallpaper but it would also be fun for gift-wrapping and fabric too. I would love this design to have another life taken up by a manufacturer. Please contact me if you would like a high resolution file or to talk about how we could work together.

See more designs on my Instagram page