Gail Bichler, The Guardian, David Pearson and others design Christmas cards for The Toy Project

A line-up of 12 renowned designers and illustrators including The New York Times’ Gail Bichler, The Guardian’s Chris Clarke, David Pearson and Marion Deuchars have designed Christmas cards for charitable initiative The Toy Project.

The cards will be sold to raise money to buy toys for children’s hospital wards over Christmas, where thousands of children will spend the festive period. The Toy Project is a collaborative venture between Fedrigoni, Heart Artist’s Agency, Boss Print and Esterson Associates.

The Guardian’s deputy creative director Chris Clarke worked with Kyle Bean to create a paper robot for his card design, while other contributing artists include Jim Sutherland, Dan Adams, Lee Funnell, Adam Simpson, Tom Gauld, Michael Kirkham, Jason Ford and Lara Harwood.

Gail Bichler said of her card: “Photographer David La Spina and I set out to make an image of a classic toy, but also wanted it to somehow reference our home, New York City.”

Adam Simpson created a “classic Santa with a retro mechanical twist”, and Tom Gauld drew “an alphabet of toys,” for his card, hoping to create “a bit of a puzzle, with a little bit of satisfaction as you realise what each image is. It took me ages to find a toy for “N” for some reason… Ninja Turtle is a bit of a stretch, but it was fun to draw”.

Michael Kirkham told the story behind his contemporary image: “Watching my children combine different types and scales of toys to form an expressionistic universe is always very inspiring. It was great to be able to directly use some of those ideas in this project.”

David Pearson simply described his design as “unbridled joy!”

The cards are available to buy through Fedrigoni Imaginative Papers Studio London; more infomation here.