This week I have another cool set of vector freebies for you. Lately, I have been doing a lot of experimentation with seamless patterns. I have found that pattern design is both fun and challenging so this week I put together a set of 25 seamless polka dot pattern swatches for you guys.

Feel free to use these patterns in any number of ways including invitations for baby showers, birthdays, package design, website design or any other project that you are working on.

Click on the following link for a quick tutorial on how to install and work with pattern swatches in Illustrator.

This week I had the opportunity to interview Sean Hodge, Editor of PSDTUTS and VECTORTUTS; two of my favorite websites.  I have a great deal of respect for Sean and I was very excited when he agreed to the interview; especially given his busy schedule.  In this Interview Sean offers some really great insights into how he fell into the world of blogging as well as how a successful design blog is run.  I really hope you guys enjoy this interview and when you're done, be sure to remember to visit his websites and to connect with him using the social network of your choosing.

Since I posted my set of 50 Plaid Pattern Illustrator Swatches I've had quite a few requests for a tutorial on how I created them.  The cool thing about plaid patterns is that they are very easy to create; so easy in fact that you can create them in about 4 steps.  In this tutorial, I will guide you through the steps necessary in order to create a Burberry style pattern swatch in Illustrator. 

This week I had the opportunity to interview Fabio Sasso from Abduzeedo.  He is always cranking out amazing tutorials and inspirational posts on his blog and I have wanted to interview him for some time.  I initially discovered his website through one of his posts on PSDTUTS and quickly found that he was posting some really great content regarding Photoshop as well as Illustrator and Fireworks; not to mention photography and inspiration.  I hope you enjoy this interview with Fabio and when you're done, I hope you will also take the time to view his websites and follow him on the social networking site of your choosing.

If you've looked at my gallery, you may have noticed my fascination with kaleidoscopes. I think they're amazing to look at and I've been experimenting for some time in Illustrator trying to come up with the best way to replicate that effect. Lately, I've had some success with this so I decided to post the resulting vectors on my site and of course give them away for free.

Included in this set are 50 high quality vector kaleidoscope shapes.  You can use these shapes in any way you like either as a logo, as part of a design you're using, as a brush or pattern; maybe even as part of a tattoo.  I hope you guys enjoy this set and find a place for them in your work.

When I released my set of 50 Astonishing Illustrator Swatches last week I was really happy with how they turned out and really excited about the response that I received but as I was doing some shopping last weekend, I realized that there was something missing in that set.

As I was browsing the shop I was in I noticed that many of the argyle sweaters in the shop weren't completely covered in argyle. In fact, some had just one argyle stripe across the chest. This got me thinking; why not design a set of argyle brushes? That would certainly allow you guys to easily create argyle strips.

To make a long story short, I created this set loosely from the swatch palette that I created last week. I used the basic patterns and the color schemes to set up the brushes but I had to make a considerable amount of modifications in order to get the vectors to repeat horizontally. I hope you guys enjoy this set of brushes. You can use them in any number of ways including fashion design, textiles, package design and of course, graphic and web design.

I subscribe to a lot of RSS feeds; so many in fact, that I could spend hours browsing through my feed reader.  I love feeds because they put all my favorite sites into one place.  Below is a list of RSS feeds that I subscribe to and recommend to all my readers.  I am hoping that this list can become a complete and comprehensive list of feeds for design sites so don't hesitate to suggest a site that I may have missed.

I found this really great set of fashion sketching demonstrations by Kathryn Hagen, a fashion illustration instructor at Otis College.  Ms. Hagen is a master at mixing media to achieve life-like and beautiful results.  Her tools include copic markers, prismacolor pencils, tombo brush pens, gouache, liner pens and milky gel pens.

Her book, Fashion Illustration for Designers includes a dvd packed with tons of videos just like the ones below.  Even if you don't study fashion her book is an excellent resource for improving your drawing and design skills.  I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in learning how to sketch or draw.