Animal

Almost every animal print sold on a phone case is wrong in a way that is easy to see once you know it. A cheetah has solid black spots. A leopard has open rosettes — broken rings with a darker centre. An ocelot has rosettes that are larger, more elongated and arranged in rough chains. Most prints labelled cheetah are leopards, and most leopards are neither.

These were drawn from museum pelts, which is why Ocelot has open rings and Cheetah has filled ones. It matters less for zoology than for how the print behaves when it is printed small: a solid spot holds its shape, an open rosette turns into a smudge unless the line weight is drawn for the size.

Stripes are not parallel

Zebra stripes widen at the shoulder and compress toward the rear. Copying that is the only thing that stops a zebra print looking like a barcode, and it is the first thing a tiled pattern loses.

Zebra Crossing compresses toward the hinge, which puts the busiest part of the pattern where the fold is and leaves the outer edges open. On a folding phone that is the useful way round: the dense area is hidden when the phone is closed and revealed when it opens.

Tortoiseshell is a depth problem

Real tortoiseshell — the kind in a good spectacle frame — has colour at different levels inside the resin. Amber under umber, with the light travelling through one to reach the other. Reproduce that flat and it looks like a stain.

This one is built in layers so the amber appears to sit beneath the umber. It is the only print in this family that is trying to look like a material rather than like a coat, and it is the one that works best on the leather-touch shell, where the surface already has some depth of its own.