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Unique Repeating Pixel Pattern Backgrounds
Web design has progressed so much that it doesn’t need to be boring or plain anymore. Innovators like Apple and Google are pushing everyone to design clean, simple websites with depth, texture, noise and grain. When designing like this, you want to keep the background image sizes as small as possible. That’s where these repeating pixel patterns come in. The size of the tile is tiny, but when they repeat they create the illusion of textured paper, diagonals, dots or a funky op-art pattern.
There are a ton of these out there, but here are 3 of our favorites that feel fresh and new:
We discovered Naomi’s work on Dribbble and immediately purchased her full pixel pattern set. For just $5 you get a full set of 48 patterns, in both black and white. You simply load the .pat file to your Photoshop Pattern palette and all of the repeating patterns are at your fingertips. She also created a great PDF brochure guideline that accompanies the set.
This is a fairly new site which is amazing. These backgrounds are also repeating pixel patterns, but they are paper textures. You know all the gray linen and noise backgrounds you’re seeing on Apple and Twitter lately? This is where you can find them. You can try each texture right on their site to get a visual sense of how it might look on yours. They even have a WordPress plug-in and Global Pattern Preview for you to try the backgrounds directly on your site. They are free and rely on users donations. We downloaded the whole set and donated $20 via PayPal.
This is a simple site with cool op-art, floral and plaid patterns. If you’re designing a fashion, perfume, cosmetic or boutique website, one of these may help bring the brand to life. There are 158 patterns to choose from. These are also free and the designer asks that you put a link back on the site you use them on. That’s a good deal!
Have you discovered any new resources? Let us know below.