For a slimming workout look, basic black leggings can’t be beat. Now, designers are trying to encourage ladies to branch out by using innovative digital technology to create more flattering patterned leggings.

The North Face’s new high-rise contoured tech tights ($110 at TheNorthFace.com) use highlights and shadows to slim the leg. To create a visual effect, the brand’s designers teamed up with cognitive scientists using 3-D software.

The leggings come in a black diamond-grid pattern, which appears darker and more concentrated on the outer parts of the legs. The diamonds air out on the top of the thighs, the front of the shins and the butt, revealing a lighter gray color that gives the illusion that the gradient is hugging the body.

The results are meant to “visually contour and enhance a woman’s natural shape, based on how humans perceive shadow and light,” according to the North Face creative director Keryn Francisco.

Lululemon also aims to upgrade the punchy pattern game with an “Art in Motion” collaboration with Central Saint Martins. Fashion students in the London art school’s master’s program created digital patterns inspired by Kyoto, Japan, which were then printed onto the brand’s top-selling high-waisted Wunder Under leggings using body-mapping techniques ($128 at Lululemon.com).

“We truly looked at where [the patterns] would enhance not just the form but the body in motion,” says Audrey Milligan Reilly, senior vice president of women’s design at Lululemon.

To ensure they land in all the right places, patterns are graded specifically to sizes from 2 to 12.

In the fight to stand out in a sea of basic black, focusing on pattern placement just might give brands a leg up on the competition.