I’m always on the lookout for interesting secondary shapes – those shapes that unexpectedly emerge from the whitespace or background of a design. In one of my recent EQ8 sessions (which are becoming longer and more frequent, but unfortunately no less frustrating!), I played around with some lolly/bowtie shapes, and discovered some crosses in the background. With a bit of ingenious spacing and a handy border, I created even more crosses.

Those red and white crosses are all the same size, but the colouring gives them different emphasis. They’re both brought to the foreground though, with the original lolly/bowties disappearing into the background (for me, at least).

Did you notice that I didn’t include the thin black lines in this design? They’re included by default in the blocks, but you can remove them in EQ8 before exporting the design as a PDF. Sometimes I like to keep them, but this time I thought the design looked just as good without them.