It’s that time of the year again. Decorations are going up, there’s a chill in the air, and we’re finding excuses to buy ourselves presents under the guise of “it’s work related.”
Joking aside, it’s hard to find great gifts for the creative types on your shopping list, so I braved the malls and online stores to go on the hunt for you. What I came back with is a whole sled-load of gift ideas that are sure to put a smile on your face. And they’re all really cool, which will make you this season’s most awesome gift giver. You’re welcome.
Gifts for Your Eyes
Exploded Alphabet Print
Matt Stevens, $25, hellomattstevens.com
Type is an art, and it’s also an obsession. Matt Stevens makes that abundantly clear with his beautiful Exploded Alphabet print. Matt created exploded designs for several of his favorite typefaces, and each letter is a work of art in and of itself.
The two-color prints are 18 × 24 inches on 100 lb Cougar bright white stock—just right for Ikea’s Ribba picture frame (model 903.016.21).
Matt is signing and stamping each print for a nice personal touch, too. His eye for design makes Exploded Alphabet a perfect accent for your office or home, and while each letter looks fantastic, Matt doesn’t guarantee you can actually build them from his designs.
Modern Arc Desktop Mobile
Ekko Workshop, $60, fab.com
Our desks may not be big enough for large pieces of art, so it’s great that the designers at Ekko Workshop in Portland, OR have come up with some awesome designs that look good without taking up too much space. One of my favorites is the Modern Arc Desktop Mobile. It’s made from laser-cut aluminum in colors that’ll look slick most anywhere.
The Arc is 8 inches high, 7 inches wide, and 6 inches deep, with teal and gray disks hanging from an arched orange base. It’s balanced just right, so the disks spin without getting too bouncy, plus it’s easy to clean if it gets dirty: just wipe it off with a cloth.
Neil Stevens Flight Tag Prints
Neil Stevens, £30.00, crayonfireshop.bigcartel.com
It doesn’t matter whether it’s at home or the office; seeing blank walls is torture for us creative types. I’m always on the hunt for cool prints, which is why I’m so glad I came across Neil Stevens’s work…
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…All of his prints are great, but I’m especially fond of his retro flight tags. They’re beautiful re-creations of the flight tags airlines attached to luggage in the 1960s and 1970s.
Neil re-created flight tags for several major airports, such as New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Copenhagen, Dublin, London, and my personal favorite, Reykjavik. The posters are Giclee-printed A3 size, or for £46.00 you can get a 500 × 700mm print. They’re all beautiful, and a wonderful reminder of a time when flight tags could be functional and good looking—unlike today’s functional but oh-so-bland black and white thermal printed tags.
Where’s Wall-E Print
Richard Sargent, £12.99, etsy.com
The sci-fi universe is filled with memorable robots, as is Richard Sargent’s Where’s Wall-E print. He drew and colored hundreds of robots from TV shows and movies, including the one robot you need to find: Wall-E. You’ll have to spend some serious time looking for Wall-E because he’s mixed in with a massive jumble of robots like R2-D2 and C-3PO, Marvin, K-9, Gort, Bender, Cylons, and more.
Richard’s print is A1-size, and he signs each one for a nice personal touch. The print quality is great, and it even offers a little bit for the hard-core sci-fi fans to debate…like are Daleks and the Tin Man really robots? My take: Daleks, no; Tin Man, yes.
Gifts for Your Mind and Bookshelf
Knowledge Is Beautiful
David McCandless, $30, amazon.com
Checking out amazing designs can be a great source of inspiration, especially when they’re infographics from David McCandless. He’s the author behind The Visual Miscellaneum and Information is Beautiful, and his new book, Knowledge is Beautiful, builds on his already fantastic graphics.
The hardback book is packed with amazing graphics detailing information about our world and history, how events are interrelated, politics, science, and more. Knowledge is Beautiful is more than eye candy; it’s an exercise in design, plus it’s loaded with facts, data, and relationships presented in the most beautiful way. The cover price is $30, but you can currently pick it up on Amazon for $21.69.
Steve Jobs: Insanely Great
Jessie Hartland, $22.95, amazon.com
Love him or hate him, the life of Steve Jobs is a big topic this year thanks to Aaron Sorkin’s film about Apple’s iconic leader. Turns out a lot of people wanted a dramatic documentary about his life, and not a three-part story inspired by events in his life. If you’re in the former group, how about a really fun graphic novel as a Steve Jobs biography? That’s exactly what Jessie Hartland created in her book Steve Jobs: Insanely Great. The book walks the line between showing Steve Jobs as a hero and a tyrant, and even though it’s a hardback comic book, you’ll find lots of details about the man who wanted to leave a dent in the universe. From a graphic design standpoint, the book is just plain fun to look at. Bonus: You’ll get to learn some interesting facts about the man who had a direct impact on the graphic design world. Steve Jobs: Insanely Great lists for $22.95, but Amazon sells it for $14.75.
The Art of the Brick:
A Life in LEGO
Nathan Sawaya, $29.95, amazon.com
You may not recognize his name, but there’s a good chance you’ll recognize Nathan Sawaya’s work. He’s considered one of the world’s top artists working with LEGO bricks, and he’s giving us a glimpse into his creative process with his book The Art of the Brick: A Life in LEGO. He talks about the self-doubt he faced after giving up his legal career to create sculptures with bricks people considered to be nothing more than toys, and working in a medium he was told wasn’t really art. He also talks about the inspiration behind his most popular works and the emotional effort that goes into his creative process.
Each work of art comes with no more than a couple pages, with Nathan sharing insights into the piece and anecdotes about the build and what was happening in his life. It takes just a few minutes to read about any piece in the book and is great for jump-starting your own creativity. And if you aren’t in a reading mood, just flip through the pages and marvel at the beautiful photos. List price is $29.92, but Amazon sells the book for $20.12.
Designer’s Grab Bag
CC Embossed Rolling Pin
Rainbow Rolling Pins, $29.99, etsy.com
Who doesn’t wish for flaky pie crust and cookies that proclaim their creative tendencies with panache (and maybe also ganache)? This handmade wood rolling pin has got the mnemonics for InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, Bridge, After Effects, and more CC applications engraved into it, not to mention the Acrobat Swoosh.
It creates repeatable product that’s not only tasty but looks fabulous. Hey, this is starting to sound like an advertisement for using templates and styles to streamline and ensure the quality of your work. But it’s not for your “just desserts;” you can use it on non-edible media as well, like pottery. Hmm, that gives me an idea…
InDesign Glass Necklace
Eclectic Penguin, $10.00, etsy.com
Show your colors! This cool, 14-mm-square handmade glass-tile necklace will have your designer friends smiling knowingly and non-designers (and maybe your parents) scratching their heads and wondering who “I.D.” is…or “P.R.” or “D.W.” or …
Wear it at conferences instead of a name tag, or just to remind yourself, and others, every day of the important players on your creative team. They don’t all have to be human, you know. If people can date their iOS (like in the movie “Her,”), then InDesign can be a necklace. Oh yeah, there are cuff links too.
CC Pillow Set
RuVaTo, $77.34, etsy.com
When you or the graphic designer in your life need a work break—or maybe this is part of your creative process—you can relax with these comfy sofa pillows. No, you can’t have just one; they are a family (it’s a suite, remember?). They might even serve a role in your editorial meetings, where actual weapons are not permitted.
Punctuation Coasters
Ugmonk, $32, ugmonk.com
Everyone needs a place to set their coffee, or beer, or whatever, without leaving stains on their desk. Ugmonk has you covered with their punctuation coasters.
The set of five coasters includes %, ?, &, !, and @ laser-engraved on bamboo, plus a bamboo storage case. The coasters look fantastic, and will fit in perfectly at your office or home with your favorite mug on top.
Chalkboard Mug
Firebox, $9.09, firebox.com
A little coffee or tea in the morning to get yourself going is pretty normal. Better living through chemistry, they say. Since your coffee mug is probably going to end up on your desk, it might as well show off your creative side. That’s just what you can do with the Chalkboard Mug.
The Chalkboard Mug is exactly what it sounds like: a mug that’s also a chalkboard. More accurately, it’s a mug with a blackboard coating on the outside, and a normal ceramic glossy coating on the inside so your drinks won’t taste like chalk. It comes with two sticks of chalk to get you going, so you can draw or write whatever you want. When to mood strikes you, wipe it off and draw something new. Just don’t drag your fingernails down your mug.
Make the Logo Smaller T-shirt
Typography Shop, $12.99, typographyshop.com
Clients may be necessary, but they aren’t always easy to work with. Not your clients, of course. Yours are the best. For all of those other clients, however, you can express your frustration with the “Make the Logo Smaller” T-shirt from Typography Shop. You can pick one up in black with white type or white with black type. Here’s a fun detail: The shirt type is Neuzeit S, which was designed in 1966 and is based on the Neuzeit Grotesk typeface from 1928.
Men’s sizes are $12.99 and women’s are $9.99, and this design is popular, so all sizes aren’t always available. “Make the Logo Smaller” is also available in a hoodie, although it’s often out of stock. Once this run sells out, the T-shirts are jumping up $10, so try to get one before the price increase kicks in.
Smart Notebook for Creative Cloud
Moleskine, $32.95, moleskine.com
Computers are great tools for creative minds, but that doesn’t mean you can’t start with paper and pencil to sketch out ideas. Moleskine’s notebooks have been a great choice for sketches and notes for years, and now the company is making it easy to turn your drawings into vector art. The Creative Cloud Connected Notebook looks like a traditional hardcover Moleskine, but each page is really a gateway to Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign.
The pages have special guide marks that the companion iPhone app sees when it snaps a photo. After capturing a page, the iPhone app converts your drawing into a vector graphic, and then syncs it with your Creative Cloud account. The notebook cover looks sharp with its debossed Creative Cloud logo, plus it has a pocket inside and a red elastic closure band, too.
Fun and Games
View-Master VR
Mattel, $29.99, view-master.com
View-Master was cool when we were kids because it gave us a 3D-ish snapshot into places we couldn’t visit, let us be part of shows and cartoons we loved, and opened our imaginations. Now we’re grown up, and Mattel has a new version called View-Master VR that feels like it’s just for us because it does the virtual reality thing. It works with your iPhone or Android smartphone and View-Master Experience Packs, downloadable View-Master apps, and Google Cardboard apps, too. Mattel has Space, Destinations, and Wildlife packs available now, and more are on the way.
Even though you can download the Experience Packs, buying the physical versions is better, because they include their own augmented reality features. Just set the Experience Pack disk on a flat surface to see animated menu options and other features through your fancy new goggles. View-Master VR isn’t on par with Oculus Rift, but that’s OK, because you don’t have to strap it to your head—and it looks a lot cooler, too.
CMYK Playing Cards
Fancy, $14, fancy.com
Playing cards are playing cards—unless you’re buying them for a designer. Then they’d better be creative and cool looking, just like the CMYK playing cards from Fancy. Unlike regular playing cards, the CMYK deck doesn’t note suits with hearts, diamonds, spades, or clubs, but instead uses printing colors: cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. Card values are opacity percentages where 3, for example, is 30 percent, 7 is 70 percent, and 10 is 100 percent.
It’s easy to tell each card apart even when the deck is shuffled, plus the colors and opacities in a mixed hand look pretty awesome. This deck won’t make you better at blackjack or poker, but you will look cooler while playing.
1000 COLOURS Puzzle 3rd Edition
Clemens Habicht, $70 AUD, puzzle.lamingtondrive.com
Jigsaw puzzle fans are in for an interesting twist with Clemens Habicht’s 1000 COLOURS design. He created a puzzle that shows the CMYK color spectrum where each piece is a unique color. Instead of re-creating a photograph or other image that relies on finding matching bits cut across multiple pieces, you’re building a graphic that we all know and recognize without the help of reference images.
The cool thing about Clemens’ puzzle is that we’re putting the pieces together based on our understanding of the color spectrum. Every part locks in place to lead you to the next shade, and it’s a great exercise in recognizing subtle color gradients. His puzzle is relaxing, but it’s also a cool visual training tool.
LEGO Mac Classic
Chris McVey, $78.50, shop.chrismcveigh.com
The Mac, along with PageMaker and PostScript, jump-started the digital design revolution and changed the creative world forever. LEGO bricks have had a huge impact on our imaginations and creativity, too, so it makes sense that eventually they’d cross paths. LEGO designer Chris McVey is well known for his creative brick creations, one of which is his computer-for-the-rest-of-us in LEGO form.
Chris’s 332-brick 128K Mac is a faithful reproduction—albeit smaller than the real thing—in a kit you can build yourself. My First Computer: Byte Edition v3.0 includes a classic Mac with keyboard and mouse, a display that says “hello,” and a case you can open to see the circuit board and CRT inside, no special tools required. It’s an easy build, and looks cool on your desk or bookshelf.
Whisky Advent Calendar
Master of Malt, $188.13, masterofmalt.com
I’m sometimes slow on the uptake, so it wasn’t until last year I learned about counting down the Christmas holiday with advent calendars. It’s a good thing, because otherwise I might have missed out on discovering this year’s Whisky Advent Calendar from Master of Malt. To be clear: An advent calendar. With a different Whisky. Every day. For a month.
The calendar includes 24 whisky samples, so that’s a shot a day. It’s an amazing collection of quality whiskies (no Wild Turkey here) from some of the best distilleries. You get to try out a 50-year old Scotch that’s very rare, winners from the 2014 World Whisky Awards, an award-winning Japanese whisky, and more. I could tell you more, but that would take the surprise out of opening a new sample each day.
Get Your Tech On
Sphero BB-8
Sphero, $149.99, sphero.com
Sometimes creativity means taking a break from your computer and finding a fun diversion in the office, and one of the coolest diversions I’ve found is the Sphero BB-8 remote control robot. BB-8, for the two of you who haven’t been buried in the onslaught of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” advertising, is the cute ball-shaped droid that accompanies Rey, Finn, and Poe on their adventures as they try to stop the First Order from taking over the galaxy.
Just like BB-8 in the movie, Sphero’s softball-size version zips around while chirping and beeping—and its little dome head stays on top of its body while it rolls around. You’ll need the companion BB-8 app for the iPhone or Android smartphones to control your little droid. You can drive your droid around or set it loose to explore on its own. When BB-8’s battery runs low, just set it back in the included USB charging base. Fair warning: cats may be intrigued by BB-8, but they are not amused.
Pantone 8GB Flash Drive
Pantone, $21.99, pantone.com
USB flash drives still come in handy when we need to move files but don’t have a good Internet connection. You can use the same old boring yet functional drives everyone else has, or you can rock your designer style with Pantone’s colored thumb drives. They’re available in 4GB and 8GB sizes, and Pantone says 16GB versions will be available at some point, too.
Pantone’s USB sticks are available in five colors: 18-1438 (Marsala), 18-3224 (Radiant Orchid), 213 C (Pink), Violet C, and 285 C (Blue). They’re small enough to fit in your pocket without showing, and they have a small chain loop to help keep them from getting lost. They look like little Pantone chips, too, which is pretty slick.
Guide
Griffin, $39.99, griffintechnology.com
Losing a video or sync cable behind your desk is the worst. Fishing them out from their dark hiding places is a total pain, and crawling out from underneath a desk always makes people talk, so it’s great that Griffin invented its Guide cable-management system. The Guides are a set of heavy no-slip metal slabs with magnetic U-shaped loops that keep your cables in place and safe from slipping away when they aren’t attached to your computer.
The kit includes three metal bases and three magnetic anchors you can use to route cables and keep them on your desk instead of under it. Sure, other companies make cable guides, but Griffin’s look great on your desk no matter what computer you’re using.
Pulse 2 Bluetooth Speaker
JBL, $199.95, jbl.com
Silence is important for concentrating on some design projects, but others need some tunes to keep you motivated. JBL’s Pulse 2 helps by letting you listen to your music while giving you a lightshow, too. It’s a Bluetooth speaker that’s a little taller than a soda can with a wall of color-changing LED lights. You can customize its light show, and it also includes a sensor so you can sample colors and then see them dance to life on your speaker.
The Pulse 2 is splash-proof, sports a 10-hour rechargeable battery, includes a built-in noise cancelling microphone so you can answer calls without picking up your phone, and you can chain multiple speakers together for bigger sound. It also has an audio in port so you can connect devices that don’t support Bluetooth, like iPods.
This article was last modified on February 16, 2022
This article was first published on December 3, 2015
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