When it comes to retro-inspired graphic design, RetroSupply Co. should be at the top of every designer’s list of resources. Established by Dustin Lee, RetroSupply Co. goes the extra mile to ensure its products will create an authentic midcentury appearance by crafting them from genuine materials. Dustin’s been known to play with decades-old wax oil crayons, product boxes, wood, ink, steel wool, rags, foil, paper, coffee, and even actual garage grime to create realistic weathering, distressing, and aged effects.
His work results in powerful digital tools that shave hours off of a graphic designer’s workflow; his textures and effects are applied with a few mouse clicks in Photoshop or Illustrator, aging digital graphics by decades, in mere seconds. Every product from RetroSupply Co. will add a genuinely vintage appearance to your projects with a minimal amount of effort.
One of RetroSupply Co.’s most recent releases is The Dead Pen – A Wicked Cool Hand Drawn Toolkit for Adobe Illustrator. These “horribly inky” vector brushes will allow you to create a hand-drawn fine liner pen appearance through the use of pattern, line, and scatter brushes.
You can use these brushes in two different ways to accommodate your workflow. If you prefer to draw digitally, use the brushes in illustrator and draw your little heart out. If you prefer to lay your ink on actual paper using actual pens, scan your drawings and then use the brushes to add the textured details digitally.
The Dead Pen includes 20 scatter brushes comprised of dots, stars, crosses, triangles, circles, swirls, and more, along with 16 no-stretch line brushes that feature both long and short strokes for smooth digital ink application. It also includes 26 pattern brushes that offer stippling, multiple lines, multiple dashes, zig-zags, loops, waves, and others. The Dead Pen offers nine pattern swatches of stippling, multiple lines, dashes, waves, and zig-zags. This toolkit also provides two pieces of Adobe Illustrator artwork that you can check out if you’d like to see how the effects are applied.
RetroSupply Co. currently offers almost 100 products through YouWorkForThem, including a variety of fonts, textures, print effects, brushes, logos, and layer styles. Visit their portfolio to check out the rest of their products and if you love midcentury design elements, bookmark it because you won’t want to miss any of their future releases!
