Generative patterns, no code editor required

Most layouts get to a point where something needs to sit behind the type. A flat color feels unfinished, a stock texture looks like a stock texture, and building a proper pattern by hand in Illustrator eats an afternoon you don't have.

Book of Shapes is a library of minimal, generative SVG patterns made by designer Nikolaj Sokolowski. Each pattern is built from a set of rules rather than drawn once, so every one comes with a few sliders. Move them, get a new version, take the SVG.

How it works

The patterns are sorted into eight groups: grid, flow, radial, noise, isometric, distortion, organic and physics. Each one gets a short note on how it's made. Woven Grid, for example, pushes a coarse grid out of shape, then fills every warped cell with a fine mesh, so it reads like stretched fabric. Where the idea started with someone else, the note says so and names them.

Every pattern also has a seed, and that's where most of the variety lives. Change the number and the same rules draw a different pattern, so it's quick to roll through options until one sits right in your layout.

How to use it

Pick a pattern. Start on the home page and filter by group, or sort by recent, popular or liked. Click any pattern to open it.

Tune it. The pattern's controls sit right next to it, and it redraws as you drag. Flow Lines has domain, separation, stop distance and seed. Once you've moved something, Save variation keeps that version and Reset to defaults takes you back to the start.

Take it with you. Download SVG gives you the file, and Copy for Figma puts it on your clipboard to paste straight into a frame. The SVG is plain vector, so it scales to any size and recoloring strokes or cropping to a frame is a normal Figma or Illustrator job. For something more finished, Make a poster sets the pattern, as you tuned it, on a typographic sheet with its name and a number. Recolour cycles the colorways, the arrows step through layouts, and the sheet downloads as SVG too.

Anything you heart, tune or save as a poster lands under Collected, so it's there when you come back.

The license is the good bit

Whatever you generate is yours to use, commercial or not, in print, on screen or on products. There's no fee, no permission to ask for and no credit required, though "Pattern from bookofshapes.com" is the suggested line if you want to give one. The one limit is redistribution: you can't sell or give away the patterns themselves as an SVG pack, a template library or a generator. In the license's own words, a pattern can be part of what you sell, but it can't be the thing you sell.

Heads up

Three patterns recreate existing works. Joy Division and Joy Division Mesh follow the Unknown Pleasures cover, and Brockmann Beethoven Arcs follows a Müller-Brockmann poster. They're there to study how the originals were built, and the license asks that you don't publish or sell them.

The style also leans one way: fine lines, dots and grids. If a project needs bold, chunky or hand-drawn texture, look elsewhere.

Who it's for

Designers who need a background, a texture or a recurring graphic device for a brand system, and would rather tune something than draw it. It's also a gentle way into generative design, since every pattern shows its controls and explains its logic.

It's free and there's nothing to sign up for before you start. Pick a group, roll a few seeds and see what turns up.

Written by Steve Salgado