Patterning

You may notice a slight difference to the blog appearance this morning. Until now, the grey background was framed with a white border. I thought it was a little blah and have been poking around trying to find something that makes me feel better about it.

Recently, I’ve been playing about with the Pattern Generator.

Yes, I know that there are all kind of places where one can find a pre-built image but if you know me, I’m all about creating things from scratch. That gets rid of the stock appearance and makes things different from all else. Or, in this case, just a little different but I like it.

I generated this pattern.

I wanted something that complemented the grey background but something that really didn’t stand out or take over.

This was actually more difficult and time-consuming than I thought it was going to be. It’s not that generating the actual image is difficult – it’s that the interface has so many different options so I had to try them all, or most of them, out.

I really, really appreciated the fact that the author recognizes that many of us have moved from a stark white displace to something darker and easier on the eyes. That was one of the first things I did. It’s a simple concept but made it easier to stick around and play with things.

I can’t help but think that something like this would work well with students. We’ve all seen their creations that are essentially pulled from an image library.

There is another world for this and that’s created by the imagination in their mind. That’s where a tool like this fits in perfectly.