Remember the magazine Tiger Beat?

If you don't, your sister, mother, or wife probably does. The magazine continues to be de rigueur when it comes to dreamy teen heartthrobs. And with the ever-increasing buying power of adolescents, what better way to sell piles and piles of advertising space?

I challenged myself to create a pattern in Illustrator that would be every bit as cotton-candy-soda-pop-junk-food-delicious as Tiger Beat was when I was a wee teenage lady. In practicing with my Wacom tablet and navigating the exciting depths of Adobe Illustrator, I keep finding myself searching for the most fun and delightful things I could possibly work on. Nobody said practice pieces had to be stodgy and serious, after all!

Here's what happened:

I started with this sweet little guy — quite the fine example of a tiger baby. Cubs are undeniably one of the happiest, most delightful things on Earth, with their jaunty stripes and fuzzy little ears. Total joy material. The only thing that could make baby tigers better?

Ice cream and hearts. Oh yeahhh.

I gave our tiger baby here a decked-out cone of delicious dessert, topped with beaucoup cherries. If this isn't a cure for your sweet- (and cute-) tooth, I don't know what is! The "tiger leaves" and bamboo crossbones round out the pattern, rooting the cub in a candy-coated version of his native turf.

The only thing I had left to do was colorize my work and turn this sweeter-than-thou composition into an Illustrator swatch. In choosing the colors, I looked to some of my favorite Wes Anderson films and their righteous use of complementary colors. My end goal: Create a complex wallpaper from my sugar-sweet design that would look abstract from a distance, but be adorable close up.

Here's the final product:

I had great fun going a little nutty with the pattern! In the end, I prefer it at a closer view, but I still enjoy the almost traditional-looking wallpaper effect of the denser pattern.

I hope the tiger baby and pink ice cream uplift you on this snowy Monday!

xoxo

CW

Silly thoughts, stated obtusely.

Tiger Beat: A Pattern-Making Experiment