Pattern

In music, a motive is a short musical idea. Each pattern is one motive. Each cover, motif and report gets its own unique layout. In the pattern above, the mark takes the place of four steps. The system is built to look like a piano-roll, allowing us to create interesting and flexible layouts that remain consistent. Time goes from left to right, pitch from low at the bottom to high at the top. Each note is a bar: its position gives its start and its pitch, and its length gives its duration. Regenerate it to make a new pattern.

How it’s built

The grid is always made of square cells, a path starts on a random row and moves from left to right. Each block is 1 or 2 columns wide, chosen at random. After each block, the path moves up or down by one row. Blocks always touch, edge to edge or corner to corner. There is never a gap between them. Each block’s gradient runs up or down, chosen at random. This stops the pattern reading as one smooth ramp.

A square sits on the path. In the pattern above, it is a 4×4 box with the mark in it. The square takes the place of the blocks in its columns. The path meets one side of the square and leaves from the other side, edge to edge or corner to corner.

At least one column of path stays on each side of the square. The square never enters the bottom row. The bottom row always stays clear, for the wordmark and a caption. The background is always the palette’s surface colour, and every block gradient runs between the palette’s two colours.

Examples

Usage