Illustrator: Bee Gees Art Nouveau Pattern

Bee Gees Art Nouveau Pattern

I’ve always liked the Art Nouveau pattern in the background of the Bee Gees’ Main Course album from 1975. The cover was originally designed by Drew Struzan, who also did almost all of the cool movie posters from the 80s and 90s. The Bee Gees cover has a lot of cool elements, though I’ve never felt they really worked together as a whole. The pattern is still a good one though. I’m sure it’s a pattern that existed before this from the Art Nouveau era, but I’ve never actually looked it up.

Remaking The Pattern

The pattern itself is rather easy to recreate, since it’s one square, with the content mirrored, and offset. All I had to do to remake it was draw one quarter of the square below and flip the contents horizontally. Then just copy and offset them below.

The Bee Gees cover though looks like a wallpaper print or something similar since they’re obviously not the computerized version we know today. So I know it’s not as good as the Art Nouveau handicrafts, but for the hour or so I put into it, this was a good result.

Main Course Pattern Single Piece

 

Main Course Pattern Single Piece Lines

I’m not sure why I made it, but I always figured if you really want to understand something visual, break it down and try to rebuild it. So that’s what I did. And now, I have a pattern that I can’t see a use for. But maybe someone out there has been waiting for this particular pattern. I’ve uploaded it here in case you know a use: http://jeffco.ca/blog-content/main-course-pattern.ai

The copyright isn’t mine to share, so it’s not mine to let you use, it’s just an exercise. But if you want to play around with it, download and play at will!

Main Course Pattern

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