skillshare Design a Decorative Border Pattern

[Chris Heath]

I posted my second class on Skillshare this week.

 

In this class I demonstrate how to use a grid and Affinity Designer's Symbol functionality to create seven decorative border patterns.

 

With Symbols, you can design a repeat unit, turn it into a symbol and watch the entire pattern dynamically change while making changes to one instance of the repeat unit. The symbol also updates on the fly.

 

The Affinity Designer files I'm using can be downloaded from within the class. Here is the link: http://skl.sh/2ylcYPr

 

You can use this link to sign up for two free months of Skillshare Premium and watch my classes for free. The sign-up section is at the top of the linked page. I hope you find this class useful.

 

[jer]

Chris, your class outlined above looks interesting but, frankly, I have the same aversion to Skillshare as I do to Adobe. That is the reason I'm now an Affinity user. And a Libre Office user. And an emClient user (non Outlook). As I understand it, you can quit anytime from the Skillshare monthly plan but I really don't want to be on anyone's plan (read as give them the right to charge & bill me) for 17,000 courses of which I might take two a year. Is your Decorative Border course somewhere else where I can Paypal it specifically and be done?

[Chris Heath]

Hi jer. 

 

I fully understand your stance on software subscription models. I don’t use Adobe for this reason, and I dislike Microsoft more than ever since having to go with their subscription model for outdated and incomplete products.

 

I initially tried Skillshare’s free period, which I think was one month at the time. I then joined up with a view to extending my teaching skills into the online area as a form of inexpensive professional development. It’s been a short and steep learning curve, however, the Skillshare staff have been wonderfully supportive through the process of putting classes together. Other teachers classes have also helped. It’s also been a good platform for gauging whether people find my classes useful; so far, so good. For someone who is unknown like myself, it’s a good place to start out teaching and building a following.

 

Once I have half-a-dozen or so classes, I plan to update and re-package them for pay-per-class platforms, then ultimately self-hosting using PayPal/gumroad or similar service. My current day job will get in the way, so this may take a year or two, or three.

 

Another teacher told me the other day of another option, where I can provide free access to my classes with a link. It doesn’t give you access to any other classes on Skillshare, and I make no royalties from it. From what I understand, the link provides first-come, first-served access for the first, e.g., ten people who use it. I was thinking of trying it out on this forum with my next class. I’ll look into it this weekend for this and my first class. It would be nice to get some feedback from non-Skillshare students.

 

Cheers

 

Chris

[Chris Heath]

Here is a link that gives the first 10 people to use it, free access to this class. The link is valid for one week (first week of October), or when all ten places in the class have been taken, whichever comes first.

 

http://skl.sh/2xK8diq

 

Note: I have renamed this class to 'Design a Simple Decorative Band' for two reasons:

• Although the patterns can be used for borders / framing, I have not covered how to handle the corners, and
• I needed to standardise the vocabulary I'm using to classify patterns. 

The term 'band' is better suited to what is covered in this class. With the next class, I'll outline a taxonomy of sorts.

 

Any feedback will be gratefully received, and with each class I post in the forum, I'll include some free spots for Affinity users.

[jer]

@Chris: 

Very kind and generous of you and I used one of your 10 to complete the course a little while ago. Nice! Short, sweet and every step was basic Affinity Designer and helpful. In fact, I knew the separate steps and what your course did for me was tie the pieces together in a great method to use AD Symbols to produce great border/pattern results.

 

It was very impressive to see the the way you free-handed the designs in the early segment with a paper copy of your guide and a drawing pen! But my work will all be done inside Designer with the Pen Tool and Shapes 'cause I'm lousy with a pencil.   So I'll be using the AD skills you showed in the 2nd and later segments by opening the PDF of your pattern Guide you provided in the downloads. I liked the time length of the course; being short allowed me to get right to my own playing around with the new knowledge. I like your ideas to follow-up with another course on framing-out the patterns/borders as many times a good horizontal border doesn't lend itself to rotating vertically and looks funny as a frame. What you did include really inspires a lot of ideas on where patterns can be helpful in posters and other designs.

 

P.S. I'm still happy to PayPal you for specific courses once you figure it out. With PayPal, donations can be sent to any PayPal user that is willing to provide their email address. 

[Chris Heath]

Thanks Jer for your review.

 

I'm keen to see what you come up with.

 

Cheers

 

Chris