From the article:
Updated: July 12 2008
A trove of links to old articles at Hillside.net.
The first mention of design patterns in relation to software was made in 1987 by Kent Beck and Ward Cunningham ( who also invented CRC Cards ). The idea of design patterns then kicked around for a few years, but became popular in 1994, with the classic text "Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software", edited by Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, et al.