Vector Background Effect #1 – Marine Square Tiles

By Tony Soh

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In this first vector background tutorial, I will be teaching you how to create this marine tiles effect. You will learn how to create it effortlessly with the transform tool. So let’s get started…

Drawing The Tiles

For the marine tiles, you will need a harmonic color scheme to match your pattern. Above is a suitable color palette I found from ColourLovers. Copy and paste it to your document. Next, draw a rounded square by holding shift to constrain the proportion. Use the color picker to pick the turquoise color from the color palette.

Go to Effect>Distort & Transform>Transform. Select 15 copies and increase horizontal to 55pt to leave gaps in between the tiles. Click OK when done. This will create a row of horizontal tile.

Now go to Effect>Distort & Transform>Transform again. Select 15 copies and increase vertical to -55pt to tile it vertically.

Coloring It With Different Tones

We will need to expand the transformation to recolor the tiles. Go Object>Expand Appearance to expand the pattern. Click Ctrl/command+G 2 times to ungroup the tiles. Select some random tiles and use the color picker to picker a lighter tone.

Repeat the steps above to set different randoms tones to your pattern.

We will now resize the tiles randomly. Go to Object>Transform>Transform Each and set both horizontal and vertical scale to 90%.

Select some random tiles you want to transform and press Ctrl/Command+D to repeat the previous transformation again to the tiles. This will resize it 90% smaller. Press Ctrl/Command+D a few more times to make the tiles smaller. Here is the final tiles pattern I have created using this technique. This might make a pretty interesting background effect for the back of your namecard. Good luck!

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About The Author: Tony Soh

Hi. I'm the founder of Vector Diary. Illustrator is my passion and I have written numerous tutorials on illustrator helping people learn illustrator. My most popular tutorial on learn illustrator has been a hit. It makes learning illustrator so easy and has benefited more than 20,000 people worldwide. Also, I've revealed some of my secret techniques in the premium tutorials. So don't forget to check it out!

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+Add Comment15 Comments

1. 
   mundo May 11th

   nice

2. 
   Kaushik Gopal May 11th

   Neat and simple…great job

3. 
   photo retouching May 11th

   A nice touch especially with summer on its way!

4. 
   xxgoblin May 11th

   really nice.. I’ll try too ^_^

5. 
   Kisan May 13th

   Very cool effect

6. 
   Tim Smith June 1st

   Great Tut! I’m gonna try this!

7. 
   vik June 8th

   cool, nice and simple!!
   thanks for sharing

8. 
   JoE June 9th

   Well this worked out damn good. I remember learning this a while ago, but I think it was called something like “step & repeat”. Thanks for the lesson!

9. 
   yarijik June 9th

   Cool!!!

   Definately will remember this technique.
   Thanks

10. 
    Snippet July 17th

    Fantastic and it was so easy. Thanks for the lesson!

11. 
    mhd August 1st

    good job

12. 
    Chester October 8th

    yo

13. 
    chester October 13th

    :0)

14. 
    ML April 6th

    Awesome and so versatile! I did my version with stars instead if rounded squares and in an orange hues palette – turned out as fanatstic

15. 
    savita August 12th

    Simple, Fast & Best, Thanks for sharing