How to Make a Distressed Halftone Pattern in Illustrator

There are many different techniques to create a halftone effect in illustrator, but most of them requires to have an image or a grayscale object before start creating the halftone effect. In this tutorial you will learn how to create a halftone pattern from scratch using only Illustrator native tools and distortion effects. We will see how to distort an element using 3 different techniques and then create a seamless pattern out of it.

Step 1

Open Illustrator and make a new 600 x 600 px file.

Step 2

Select the Ellipse Tool (L) and be sure to have the Fill set to #000000 and the Stroke to none.

Step 3

With the Ellipse Tool selected click once over the canvas, set the new circle size to 100 x 100 px and click OK.

Step 4

Following the same procedure, make another 8 circles.

Step 5

Select the first circle and go to Effect > Distort & Transform > Roughen. Apply the following settings and click OK.

Step 6

Select the second circle and again go to Effect > Distort & Transform > Roughen. Apply the following settings and click OK.

Step 7

Select the third circle and one more time go to Effect > Distort & Transform > Roughen. Apply the following settings and click OK.

Step 8

Select the forth circle and go to Effect > Distort & Transform > Tweak. Apply the following settings and click OK.

Step 9

Now select the fifth circle and again go to Effect > Distort & Transform > Tweak. Apply the following settings and click OK.

Step 10

Select the sixth circle and one more time go to Effect > Distort & Transform > Tweak. Apply the following settings and click OK.

Step 11

Select the seventh circle and pick the Warp Tool. Click and drag over the circle to freely distort it.

Step 12

Select the eighth circle. Again using the Warp Tool click and drag over the circle to freely distort it.

Step 13

Finally, select the ninth circle. One more time, using the Warp Tool click and drag over the circle to freely distort it.

Step 14

Select all the modified circles and go to Object > Pattern > Make. In the Pattern Options Panel, click on the “Pattern Tile Tool” icon.

Step 15

Click and drag over the left line of the bounding box until you see the circles are evenly spaced.

Step 16

Now click and drag over the bottom line of the bounding box until you see the circles are evenly spaced.

Step 17

Click the “Done” button in the top toolbar.

Step 18

Select and delete all the elements.

Step 19

Set the Fill Color to #e2d827 and make a new 600 x 600 px square.

Step 20

Copy (Ctrl+C) and Paste (Ctrl+F) the new square.

Step 21

Go to Window > Swatches. Click on the new created pattern to apply it to our front square.

Step 22

Right click over the square and from the dropdown menu choose Transform > Scale. Set the Scale to 30% (or any other percentage you want), be sure to only check the Transform Patterns option and click OK.

Some Final Notes

There are many different types of halftone patterns that you can make following these simple steps. In the following example you can see a pattern made using this method, but with smaller and more spaced circles, and if you wish to change the pattern color, simply double click on the pattern in the Swatches Panel, edit the colors and click Save. All the changes will be applied to your pattern and updated in the Swatches Panel.