A ground is not a motif.
So this fills the page rather than repeating
The pattern is generated at the size it will print and runs off all four edges, the way a landscape does and the way a printed ground should: nothing is tiled, so nothing has to match, and the sheet can be trimmed anywhere without a seam appearing. Seventeen styles, four inks that are CMYK because that is what they print in, and a smoothness dial that takes an outline from a cut corner to a curve. Free, in full. No sign-up.
- Free, no account.
- Every style, every colourway and every file is free from the first open — no sign-up, no credits, no watermark.
- Nothing is uploaded.
- The whole thing is drawn in your browser. No pattern of yours is sent anywhere, and none is stored.
- A page, not a tile.
- Generated at the size it prints and carried past every edge, so there is no repeat to match and no seam to hide.
- Millimetres, not pixels.
- The page, the line and the motif are real sizes. Eight across an A4 is a 26 mm motif, and the panel says so.
- Inks, not swatches.
- Eight colourways written in CMYK, ground first, and the ground can be turned off to let the stock through.
- SVG and PDF, both vector.
- Clipped to the paper with the pattern carrying on underneath — trim it anywhere and no white line appears.
What it draws
Seventeen styles, and every card below is a page of one
Generated at the size of the card and filled to its edges — all of it real output of the engine the tool runs.
Chips of stone, none of them touching
- Scattered so that no two chips come closer than they should — measured round the torus
- Every chip a different shape, and none of them a regular polygon
- The floor of every good bakery, and the inside of a lot of good boxes
Steps of cut card, lit from one side
- Each step casts a hard shadow on the one below it — no blur, no transparency, one plate
- Tints of a single ink, strong at the bottom and pale at the top, the way a stack reads
- A dashed line walks the ground between the steps, which is what makes it a map of somewhere
Four shapes, dealt onto a grid
- The quarter disc, the half disc, the circle and the plain square — and nothing else
- Some of them take two cells or four, which is what stops the eye counting squares
- A cell looks at the two beside it, so the deal never clumps into blocks of one colour
The cells of a scatter, pulled apart
- Real cells: each one clipped by the bisector against every near neighbour
- The scatter and the cells both wrap, so no cell is cut at the join
- Set the gap in millimetres — it is a printed gap, not a stroke
What it can do
The page, the styles, the inks, and the file
Seventeen styles and one thing they all do: fill the paper.
The page
What it fills.
- A4 to start with, and every other size to hand
- Any width and height you type, up to three metres
- Bleed on all four sides
- A ruled grid over the top — dashed lines or crosses, in its own ink and tint
- The pattern generated past every edge, so nothing stops short of the trim
The styles
Seventeen of them.
- Topographic contours and filled terraces
- Terrazzo, Voronoi, camouflage, low polygons
- Fish scales, star grids, waves, Truchet
- Halftone fields, grain, moiré
- Stripes, checks, polka dots, grids and tartans
The controls
What the panel shows.
- Only the handles a style actually reads — a dead control is worse than none
- How many across, which sets the motif size in millimetres
- Levels, line weight, scatter and fill, where they mean something
- Smoothness, from the geometry as worked out to a curve
- A seed, so the same page comes back and a different one is a click away
The colour
What it prints in.
- Eight colourways, written in CMYK
- Ground first, and the ground can be turned off for the stock to show
- Two to four inks, shown as they will convert
- Terraces in tints of one ink — six steps on one plate
- The screen shows the conversion; the press converts nothing
How it works
Pick a style, set the page, choose the inks, save
Four steps, and the page is full from the first one.
Pick a style
Seventeen of them, and the panel only shows the handles that style actually reads.
Set the page
A4 unless you say otherwise, and how many times the motif goes across the width.
Choose the inks
A colourway of two to four, ground first — or no ground at all, and the stock shows through.
Save it
SVG or PDF, at the size it prints, clipped to the paper with the pattern carrying on past it.
Where it is used
Everywhere a surface has to be covered
A repeat costs one plate and covers a kilometre.
Backgrounds and grounds
A page of pattern behind the type, at the size of the job rather than at some number of pixels.
Inside a box
The liner nobody expects to be printed — which is exactly why it is the cheapest surprise in packaging.
Wine and spirits
A ground for a label, a neck wrap, a gift sleeve. Bottle green and gold is one of the sets.
Covers and endpapers
Topographic contours or terraces at A4 or B2, in one ink and a tint of it.
Posters and wall art
B1 at full size, generated for that sheet rather than tiled up to it.
Screen print and riso
Two flat inks, coarse marks, and a colourway that is honest about what those presses do.
Questions
What it makes, and why nothing repeats
Why is there no tile or repeat?
Because a printed ground is a page, not a motif. Generated at the size of the sheet it can run off all four edges and be trimmed anywhere; tiled, it has to match at a seam that shows up at exactly the wrong moment. If you need a repeat for wrapping paper, that is a different tool and worth asking for.
Is my pattern uploaded anywhere?
No. It is drawn in your browser, coloured there and written to a file there. Nothing is sent to a server and nothing is stored.
What does the smoothness dial do?
It depends on the style, and the difference matters. On the shapes — terrazzo chips, Voronoi cells, camouflage — it cuts their corners. On the contours and the terraces it softens **the field** they are cut from, so every level is smoothed together. Smoothing the lines themselves is what makes two contours cross where they run close on a steep slope, and contours of one field cannot cross.
Why are the topographic lines not all the same weight?
Because every fifth one is an index contour, drawn three and a half times as heavy. That is the cartographic convention and it is what makes a survey map read as ground rather than as wiggly lines — and it is the thing most generated topographic patterns leave out.
Can I use these commercially?
Yes. What you make is yours — no licence, no attribution, no limit on files. The patterns are generated from your own settings; there is nothing of anybody else's in them.
Why only four inks?
Because a ground that needs five is usually a photograph, and a photograph is a different tool. Four covers a ground and three marks, which is what a printed pattern is nearly always built from.
Why are the colours in CMYK?
Because that is what they will print in. The screen shows them converted, which is the right way round: the press converts nothing, and a colour picked in RGB is a colour somebody else will have to decide about later.
How are the terraces only one ink?
Each step is a tint of the same ink rather than a colour of its own — 18 per cent through to solid. Six tints is one plate and one wash-up; six inks is five more.
Can I put my own drawing into a pattern?
Not yet. This draws its own motifs. A pattern built from an uploaded shape is a different job and it is on the list.
Is it really free?
Yes. No account, no credits, no watermark. It is made by a packaging manufacturer, and it exists because half the artwork that arrives here needs a ground behind it.
Cover a surface, properly
Seventeen styles, real inks, and a page filled to all four edges — A4 to start with.