Building an instantly recognizable brand takes a lot of critical thinking and a touch of finesse.

You know the importance of your color and font choices – the visual cues that trigger association with your brand in the reader’s mind.

But how do you keep your colors and fonts from getting lost in the ever-growing social media abyss?

If only there was a way to combine your visual elements into something a bit more personal and eye-catching…

…oh wait, there is!

The simplistic, yet profound, impact of incorporating patterns into your brand identity for social media.

Fantastic (Pre-Made) Patterns and Where to Find Them

The chances are probably rare that you just so happen to be a designer that has the tools and knowledge necessary to create your own patterns.

Let’s say you’re actually brand new around here and designing isn’t your forte?

You’re silently screaming at your computer screen for a solution. Well… there’s no need to fret.

Lucky for you, hiring a designer to create custom patterns for your visual brand isn’t necessary.

There’s a handful of online sources that offer pre-made patterns for even the smallest budgets where you’re bound to find the perfect set of patterns for your brand.

The absolute best place to start searching for patterns is Creative Market.

They have an entire section of their site dedicated to patterns where you can find nearly 30 thousand different sets ranging from marble to wood grains. There’s even more whimsical patterns with hand drawn unicorns if that’s more up your alley.

The endless combinations of colors, fonts, and patterns makes it easy to take a pre-designed logo and make it your own just by adding a few personal touches.

Fantastic (Custom) Patterns and How to Make Them

If you happen to be more tech-savvy and feel comfortable creating your own patterns, then allow me to recommend the three best tools you could start with:

• Illustrator
• Photoshop
• Canva

Canva is a free tool which is perfect for anyone starting out and still on a tiny budget. It’s ideal for testing the waters and deciding if designing your own patterns is something you want to continue doing, and if so, then the next couple on the list are among Adobe’s best programs.

Photoshop and Illustrator are both a bit pricier, but they’re some of the best programs out there and key staples in the design world. So, if you decide to continue creating patterns – or any other graphics for your brand – I suggest looking into these amazing programs.

The Breakdown: Illustrator vs Photoshop vs Canva

Before I dive into how to create patterns with each of these tools, it’s important to know the major differences between the three. This should help you decide which one would best fit your needs for creating your patterns.

Adobe Illustrator is a vector-based program. This means that the patterns you create can easily be scaled up or down to fit your needs without becoming pixelated.

No one wants the trainwreck of unprofessional and pixelated images scattering their website and social platforms.

This scalability easily makes Illustrator the best option.

But if you don’t see yourself getting into anything beyond creating patterns and really taking advantage of what the program has to offer, then there is no need to invest when there are free programs out there better suited for occasional use.

Adobe Photoshop is the next program I’d recommend and easily one of Adobe’s most popular.

If you’re not already familiar with it, chances are you’ve at least heard of this widely-used program.

The big difference between Photoshop and Illustrator is that where Illustrator is vector-based, Photoshop is a raster-based program.

What this means is that if you’re using a hand-drawn graphic in your pattern, you won’t be able to scale the image without it becoming a pixelated mess.

Photoshop is the tool that I primarily use for creating my social media graphics. Since I work mostly with basic shapes and organic brushes to create my patterns, this is my go-to program.

And the Artboards make it easy for me to save a variety of different graphics as ready-to-edit templates which saves me tons of time.

However, if you have hand-drawn elements, this program will give you some problems down the road if you didn’t create them large enough.

The scalability is the main difference and the ultimate deciding factor when choosing which Adobe program best suits your needs.

Sign up for a free trial of Adobe Photoshop.

Canva is a free web-based application. If you’re unsure about creating patterns, I would suggest utilizing this free option.

Although it can be used to create patterns, making your pattern seamless is nearly impossible. You’ll need to start with a canvas that is much larger than you ever anticipated, or create custom canvases for every project you plan on using them for like a Pinterest image, an Instagram square, or a horizontal banner for your blog or Facebook posts.

Canva is ideal for playing around with creating your own graphics and patterns to see if it’s something you want to invest in upgrading..

Even though it’s free, it can be a major pain in the ass if designing your own graphics and patterns is something you want to do regularly for your business.

Patterns with Illustrator

I would consider Illustrator the best and easiest tool for creating patterns.

Illustrator allows you to quickly add all of your elements, align and place them where you prefer, and then use the pattern maker tool to throw them together in various layouts.

How awesomely simple does that sound?

The best part is after having the bulk of your pattern done, you can tweak each element, and not have to move 100 to create a large canvas.

Check out this amazing tutorial on using Illustrator to create a seamless pattern for your brand!

Patterns with Photoshop

Patterns are a pretty common thing with Photoshop – they even have their own menu section. You can even save your pattern packs to easily load when you are working on graphics for your brand.

Although Photoshop requires slightly more work than Illustrator, you can create your patterns once, save them as templates, and be done with it.

Once you’ve created a set of pattern templates – reuse, recycle, and repeat simply by tweaking text and details.

To learn exactly how to create patterns in Photoshop, I recommend this video.

Patterns with Canva

Canva is a great web-based graphics program for creating unique patterns for your business. If you don’t have the time, funds, or desire to learn such robust programs such as Illustrator or Photoshop, Canva is the perfect (and free!) alternative.

But let’s address the inevitable… there’s always a downside to ‘free.’

The downside to Canva is that creating patterns can be quite the pain in the ass. Where Illustrator and Photoshop allow you to easily fill your canvas with a whole pattern in a matter of clicks, Canva forces you to create your pattern with each element individually.

In order to really save time in Canva, I recommend creating your pattern backgrounds in a few standard sizes that you commonly use and save those. It will be much more convenient to start with these as your base rather than a blank canvas every time.

Here’s an excellent walkthrough of how to create patterns with Canva from Think Creative Collective.

Where to Place Your Fantastic Patterns

The most exciting thing about custom patterns for your brand is thinking about and deciding on all the different places you could use them to further establish your brand identity.

You can design your website and social media graphics with them, but c’mon now… that should be a given.

But, in fact, there are many overlooked places where a pattern could be used to give your brand a little extra oomph.

Incorporate your pattern into business cards.

Place your new pattern on the back of your business cards – give them that little extra pizazz to catch the attention of potential customers at your next conference or networking event.

There are always tons of these exchanging hands at business events, but the typical business card is rather bland and boring. By adding the personal touch of your pattern, your brand will stand out from the rest.

Give the competition business card envy. #winning

Make your stationery pop with patterns.

Take your stationery items from #boring to #branded by adding patterns. Here’s a few ideas:

• Use patterns in the header of standard letters
• Line your envelopes with a pattern
• Have your pens and pencils printed with patterns
• Add your pattern to customer gifts such as coffee mugs

Incorporating your brand’s unique pattern into frequently used items, such as stationery, is an excellent and subtle way to provide a visual reminder of you and your brand.

Package your products with patterns.

If you create products, then you should know how important the packaging is. Simply implement your pattern onto the bottle. Breaking away from the basic solid colors will give you a bit more personalization.

Put some patterns around your website.

Carefully choose a few spots on your website that could benefit from the addition of your pattern, but be careful not to go overboard.

Patterns can be quite useful for drawing attention to a focal point on your website, or you can use the pattern to break up page sections.

So, as you can see, there’s countless ways to create stunning patterns that you can integrate into your brand for instant visual recognition.

End the monotony of boring visuals and solid color conformity today by using patterns to create consistent visual recognition to your brand identity.