Pattern fills can brighten up objects and text, and patterns in Illustrator are easy to use. They can be applied to fills, strokes, and even resized, rotated, or moved within an object. Illustrator comes with a wide variety of preset patterns, and you can create your own patterns from symbols or your own artwork. Let’s look at applying patterns to an object, and then see how easy it is to resize, move, or even rotate the pattern within an object.

Pattern fills are accessed from the Swatches panel, Window > Swatches. There is only one pattern in the Swatches panel when you first open Illustrator, but don't let that fool you. The Swatch Libraries menu is located at the bottom of the Swatches panel. It contains numerous preset color swatches, including commercial palettes like Trumatch and Pantone, as well as color palettes reflecting nature, children's stuff, parties, and more. You'll also find preset gradients and pattern presets in this menu.

To use patterns, you need Illustrator version CS3 or later.

With an object selected on the artboard, choose Patterns from the Swatch Libraries menu. You can choose from three categories: