Here's a gridded map of my town with my layout of paths so far (might tweak it in the future):
http://i.imgur.com/9sJYOVH.png
The pink squares are pattern paths and the brown squares are dirt paths. I like for pattern paths to be straight as possible (unless they're stepping stones or something), whereas I think curving, winding natural dirt paths are cute.
I want one side of my town to have a more developed city atmosphere, so I have a 2-space-wide pattern path leading to bridges and the major buildings, like Re-Tail, the Train Station, and the Town Hall. I'd line this path with a mix of street lamps, bushes, trees, and flowers.
I want the other side of my town to have a more natural, earthy, garden feel, so I'm going for dirt paths on this side. I have flowers collected from island tours marking the edges of the path and I try to run on the paths everyday, watching the progress of the grasswear. I don't have access to bushes yet (other than hibiscus), but eventually I'd like to have some bushes to help control the edges of the dirt path more.
Some tips that come to mind right now:
- Look at a map of your town and mentally connect the best path between the major buildings, or draw it.
- Feel free to lay a simple preliminary path down first (like without all the edge pieces), just so that you can figure out where you want to put the path. Then later on you can make it a more complex path with all the corner pieces and such if you want.
- It's your decision just how many paths you want to have, like if you want to have paths leading all around town, or just to the major buildings, or whether or not you want to have paths set up to villager houses or community projects.
- Work with your town's imperfections (rocks, villager houses, ponds, etc.). There's an annoying pond in mine where I would rather just have a straight path going across, but I ended up having to wrap the path around the pond. But I guess I'll plant flowers around the pond and hopefully it'll turn out looking okay. In fact, sometimes it can look nice when a path is wrapped around something, like a fountain or flowerbed, forming a square around it.
- Paths look great when they're bordered with things like flowers, bushes, street lamps, and/or trees.