- deal with the creation (construction) of objects
- Explicit (constructor) vs implicit (DI, reflection, etc)
- Wholesale (single statement) vs piecewise (step-by-step)
- concerned with the structure (e.g. class members)
- many patterns are wrappers that mimic the underlying class interface
- Stress the importance of good API design
- they are all different; no central theme (solve a particular problem)