Islamic art
Islamic ornament is built on repetition and order. It starts from a small unit or a circle, then repeats and turns it until the whole surface is covered. The best known of its forms is the shamsa, the star that opens out from a single centre.
Islamic ornament rests on three things working together: geometry, the vegetal scroll, and calligraphy. The geometry is drawn from a circle divided into equal parts, and out of that come the stars and grids that cover a wall or a ceiling. The vegetal scroll, usually called arabesque, is a system of stems and leaves that branch and turn with no visible end. Calligraphy belongs to the ornament too, running in bands and frames around the decorated field. What stands out in all of it is that no gap is left idle and nothing stops at the edge, so the pattern reads as if it carried on behind the frame.
A shamsa is a star or rosette that opens from one centre, and its name comes from the sun, because its rays run from the middle out to the rim. In manuscript Qurans it was given a full page of its own before the text, and the same figure sits at the centre of ceilings, doors and book covers. Its construction is simple at heart: divide a circle into an equal number of parts, then repeat one unit in every part until the round is complete. The more parts you divide it into, the finer the figure and the more rays it carries.
The editor has a tool called Medallion: pick a word or a shape and it copies and turns it around a ring until the round composition is complete, and every piece of it stays editable afterwards. The Shapes menu holds a ready medallion whose points, scallops and colour you set yourself. For backgrounds there is a set of Islamic patterns such as girih, the eight-point star and the vine scroll. You can also run text around a circle inside the medallion, so the writing becomes part of the ornament the way it does in a manuscript.
Open the editor, pick the Medallion tool, and set its rays and rings until it looks right.