The online portfolio of Page Redford
Just listed in my Etsy Shop! Gift Sets of my most popular Greeting Card designs!
A great way to celebrate a birthday!
What a fun way to stock up on unique, handmade greeting cards! Each card set comes in a clear acrylic box. Cards come with coordinating envelopes.
Mix or Match.
Happy Friday! In a previous post I showed some of the steps I take to create a typographic illustration. Now I will show you some of the steps I take to color a piece!
I generally do a quick thumbnail off to the side (or make a photocopy) to make sure the colors I use work in harmony. If you are working digitally, you can easily change the colors in photoshop, but with traditional work, it helps to work out your colors ahead of time.
I decided to use circus-inspired bold colors to match the bold fonts.
Once you have decided on your colors, start blocking them in. I always make sure to have another piece of paper under my drawing to help absorb some of the marker that bleeds through.
I use a variety of pen and marker types for my illustrations. Copic and PrismaColors are favorites of mine, but I also use Sharpies. Many of the colors you see in my finished illustration are a combination of several colors. Another useful tool in my typography illustrations is a chalk marker, which I use for the highlights on letterforms.
The finished illustration!
I found a new favorite place in town: The Western New York Book Arts Center. They are a non-profit that focuses in sharing the age-old traditions of letterpress printing, screen printing, and other traditional printing methods. They also have bookbinding classes and oh so much more!
I signed up to take their Letterpress I class the other day.
Even their bathroom had some great artwork and typography! Check out this great print with all of the letters and glyphs for Morgans font.
Check out their lovely wooden type. Can you see the variations in the letters? The different wood types? Beautiful.
Above are some of their glyphs and symbols in lead type. These are for letterpress, and are made from lead. They are delicate and, apparently, can be dented if dropped…so you have to be very careful with them! Obviously they have an abundance of fonts in various shapes and sizes. But it is so overwhelming to see all of the parts and pieces that go into making a printed piece.
The even have many, many vintage books and supplies nestled comfortably on their shelves.
In a previous post, I talked about updating product photographs for my Etsy Shop Pink Toe Press. This has been a process. I’ve been attempting to recreate a cohesive look for my brand both online and offline. While I offer a number of items made from a variety of mediums, I want everything to look like it belongs together.
My most recent update is my Pink Toe Press Puzzle Cube. The Pink Toe Press Puzzle Cube is a color matching cube that works much like other puzzle cubes where you can twist and turn the columns and rows of blocks to create new patterns. The fun twist of this cube is that each square is a unique color with a unique name created by yours truly. It is inspired by two of my favorite things: the Pantone paint chip system and the Rubik’s Cube.
My last photographs were lovely, but this simple and clean look blends well with my other new photography. I really like the look of the Puzzle Cube in motion, and I think that these new photographs convey the usability of the item.
This Puzzle Cube would make a great gift for an artist or designer in your life. They are great for people who love color at their desk…and even better for people who need a little help with color matching! While they do not have ALL the colors, they do make a lovely set of swatches when you twist and turn the cube.
Each cube is hand-adorned with the color swatch stickers by yours truly. Puzzle cubes are prefabricated. While they are durable and my personal puzzle cube has lasted for about a year now, they are not intended to be toy for young children. These and other fun home and office items are available at Pink Toe Press, my Etsy Shop!
Just Listed: Retro LINED PAPER Greeting Cards:
Cute cards inspired by classic paper types.
Now available in the Pink Toe Press Etsy Shop are these fun greeting cards. Each card design was hand-created by yours truly and is sized to perfectly fit a greeting card (no cheap papers used here) made from card stock. There are currently 4 designs available: Foolscap/College-Ruled 3-ring paper, Penmanship Paper, Legal (yellow) Paper, and Graph Paper.
4 designs are currently available.
They would make a lovely gift for a teacher or student in your life. Get a 4-pack for your favorite teacher at the end of the year. Perhaps you have a budding mathematician in your life? Get them a 4-pack of the Graph Paper card set! Do you know someone who is in Law School? Send her a pack of the Legal Paper cards. High School Grad who is college bound? Get him a set of the College-Ruled papers to send notes with. Elementary school teachers would surely appreciate the Penmanship Paper card set. They’re all so cute that you could get an assortment for yourself!
An assorted pack of 4 cards. They looks so lovely together!
All cards have a BLANK interior for your message.
These wonderful cards and MORE are available in the Pink Toe Press Etsy Shop every single day! Stop by today!
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas out there…And you know what that means? Time to get all of your gift-giving accoutrements together. Pink Toe Press has a fun retro-inspired solution: Paint By Number Gift Tags. They are a fun variation to the classic gift tag, using vintage Paint By Number artwork, colorful bakers twine, and space for personalization. Each tag is printed on the front AND the back so that your gift will stand out no matter which way the tag is facing.
Perfect for addressing gifts to those on the “Nice List”
Gift tags are available in non-holiday designs too! Available designs are shown below. Customizable features include the banner on each tag and the color of the bakers twine. Each tag is made from vintage Paint By Number artwork, so they vary slightly from pack to pack.
The view of the tags from the front.
The view from the back.
Available designs are: Birthday, Love, Just for You, For You, Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Don’t Open Until December 24, With Love, Handmade, or customize your own!
Put Santa to shame this year.
As an added bonus (and for extra gift-ability) the tags are embellished not only with colorful bakers twine, but with glitter accents. Each tag has a little bit of glitter detailing on the front or back.
So glittery. So shiny!
These gift tags will look great on a gift, but they could also make a great gift. Available in packs of 6.
Pink Toe? Pink Toe-n? Pink Tone!
What a handsome Puzzle Cube.
Graphic Designers rejoice! Pink Toe Press now has the Amazing and Incredible “Pink Tone” Pink Toe Press Color Puzzle Cube! A fun take on the traditional puzzle cube, this Pink Toe Press Color Puzzle Cube has dozens of unique color swatches on each square of the puzzle. Twist and turn the puzzle to create custom color combinations. Use the puzzle cube as a puzzle OR as a custom color swatch generator. Perfect for the Puzzle-Lovers and/or Graphic Designers in your life.
Get two and keep one for yourself! They make great desk decorations too!
Each Incredible “Pink Tone” Pink Toe Press Color Puzzle Cube Is hand-adorned with custom color swatch stickers. Each color was created and named by Yours Truly. While inspired by popular paint chips, these colors do not correspond to any paints, dyes, or existing colors available on the market. Each color was custom made by me for these Puzzle Cubes (Some colors are available as buttons in the Pink Toe Press Etsy Shop). Each color was printed onto a sticker which was hand-placed on each square of each cube. Puzzle cube bases come pre-assembled and are made from a hard plastic.
Tired of having your nose stuck in a book (ouch!)? Sick of playing games with angry avifauna? The Incredible “Pink Tone” Pink Toe Press Color Puzzle Cube is your solution. Small enough to toss into a book-bag or carry-on bag, this fun activity requires no batteries, no headphones, and you don’t need a 20-page rule book to play. Just twist and turn and have fun!
It will be hard to put the iPhone down, but it will be worth it!
Whether you are a designer, a puzzle lover, a painter, or someone who is looking for a GREAT gift this Holiday Season, the Pink Toe Press Color Puzzle Cube is the thing for you. The possibilities are endless for these little cubes. Stop by the Pink Toe Press Etsy Shop to grab yours today!
Color customization in action.
Twisting the cube horizontally gives you great color combinations.
Wouldn’t you want to purchase a box of “8-Count DraColour Crayons”?
I have been having a lot of fun designing packages lately and this is one of my favorites. With Halloween around the corner, I couldn’t not make something Halloween-ey. This fun design for a box of crayons takes advantage of the product window to showcase both the item inside and to reinforce the design of the Vampire. Text on the package is fun, playful, and simple enough for a child to get the message. Yet enough information is conveyed for adult customers too.
If you remember the Cat’s Meow Tea package design project that I did a few weeks ago, I kept the color palate consistent among the designs. I would really like to do more designs like this so stay tuned for more!
This package design project combines two of my loves: vintage tin rocket toys and David Bowie. I took the idea for an old-timey rocket toy and gave it a little bit of a Bowie vibe. I illustrated a Starman (Major Tom, perhaps?) on the package along with some intergalactic lyrics. I tried to keep the packaging simple but interesting; informative but not too text-heavy. Created using Photoshop and Illustrator.
One of the old brands of Tin Rockets were called Moon Patrol, or Lunar Patrol because that was on everyones’ minds at the time. Today we are more focused on Mars, so that is why this is a Mars-themed design. While youngsters may not be familiar with the Bowie references, the toy and illustrations are fun enough to make that a non-issue.
These SWEET designs will really stand out on the shelf!
I don’t have too many vices, but this project combines two of them.
1: A love for dried fruits and nuts (especially in the form of TRAIL MIXES! Yum!)
2: A fondness for the font Lobster (and its many variations) which, while no Comic Sans, does seem to be a little too popular in some design circles.
While my love for dried fruits is not really a part of the design process, the decision to use Lobster as the main font for these packages was a conscious one. I chose the font because it is easily accessible, legible from a distance, and tasteful. It’s also very versatile; I wanted lovely ligatures, not sad serifs.
This design is meant to be used on a number of different dried fruits as seen in the above image. The colors are meant to be changed to suit the overall color of the fruit, while the clear window in the center showcases the quality of the fruits inside. This helps the retailer merchandise the products either all together, or with other brands (within the same types of dried fruits) and this package will still pop. This could also be amended to include organic varieties.
Page Redford 
