Patterns are a great way to decorate websites, backgrounds, iPhone cases, and anything else that needs more than a white backdrop. But to be able to use the same pattern on many different elements or objects — and make sure it doesn’t look like Minecraft — vectors are a must. They allow us to scale to any size without worrying about losing quality.

Creating a seamless pattern used to be a difficult and labor intensive task. But ever since Illustrator CS6 built in seamless vector patterning, making a repeating pattern that doesn’t look blocky is so easy that every new Illustrator user can make complex patterns. In this post you will learn how to make a new one and change a few options to enhance it.