*** From the Archives ***

This article is from December 9, 2003, and is no longer current.

Creative Gifts for Creative People: The 2003 Holiday Gift Guide

Ho-ho-ho and all that jazz. The holiday season is here and with it all the hustle and bustle of trying to locate presents for all the family, friends, and co-workers on your gift list. Creative professionals are a different breed — not just any old thing picked up at the mall will do. If you’re plum out of ideas, don’t worry. Help is here.

We asked our crack team of contributing editors to tell us what they’d like to receive this season and what they think about giving, too. A couple of popular items emerged. Several Mac users mentioned the iSight video camera, a WiFi network device, and design books. The gift ideas are in order of the editor’s last name. Enjoy.

In the Groove
Many creative professionals enjoy listening to music when working. Shower your creative pals with music this year. I for one am glad to see the reemergence of positive, politically conscious music. My two favorite artists breaking out with things worth saying follow in the footsteps of Marvin Gaye.

The first is Michael Franti & Spearhead. Franti’s new album, “Everyone Deserves Music,” at first seems like a jumble of ballads, hip hop, late night radio groove, and a “can’t we all just get along” attitude, but listen for a while and it becomes clear this is a smart thematic album from an emerging talent.

Figure 1: Michael Franti’s album is affirmative, positive, and uplifting.

Then there’s Seal and his new album, Seal IV. Lovely lyrics sung with a heavenly voice, Seal is a great artist with a message of love for humankind that’s simple yet never sounds trite.

Not sure what to get the music lover in your life? How about an iTunes gift certificate. Yes, we’ve come a long way since Napster and the record companies have won, for now. But, hey at 99 cents per downloaded song, everyone wins with iTunes. If the gift recipient has an MP3 player, you can’t go wrong.

You’ve heard of Tivo? Now there’s a Tivo, of sorts, for radio. The Radio YourWay from Pogo Products frees you from having to be around a radio to listen to your favorite shows. Set it to record AM or FM broadcasts, then listen at your leisure. Pause, rewind, or fast-forward through commercials; transfer the recordings to your computer, or use the Radio YourWay as a traditional MP3 player. The 32-megabyte model ($119) holds four hours of material; a 128-megabyte model is $200.

Eric J. Adams

Letter Perfect
Buy someone a really good font! Especially from an independent foundry. As a virtual stocking-stuffer, buy someone the expert set to a regular font they already have. Or buy the OpenType version of a typographic standby.

A good type-specimen book. The best currently available is the FontBook, from FontShop.

Type & design tchotchkes from House Industries, such as the ’50s pillows.

Figure 2: Groovy textiles from House Industries for the hipsters on your list.

A gift certificate at a really good design bookstore, like William Stout in San Francisco or Peter Miller in Seattle.

A subscription to “Eye,” the international magazine of graphic design.

Letterpress note cards from Stern & Faye, especially the typographic ones.

Figure 3: This card is from the Stern and Faye’s Booklovers Series.

A footstool. Yes, just a plain old physical object to put your feet up on.

As an author and book designer I’m naturally drawn to books as gifts. Here are a few that are high on my list:

  • Bruce Sterling’s “Tomorrow Now: Envisioning the Next Fifty Years“;
  • For pure enjoyment, not directly related to design but very much in tune with the creative mind, try William Gibson’s novel “Pattern Recognition“;
  • I’m partial to “Language Culture Type,” as I edited it;
  • My next book, “Contemporary Newspaper Design,” won’t be out in time for Christmas, but its publisher Mark Batty Publisher has a number of interesting titles for the design inclined:
    • “Type & Typography” (essays on type from 20 years of Matrix, the review for printers and bibliophiles; I did an intro for it);
    • “Tart Cards” by Caroline Archer (wonderfully designed book about those tatty little London cards; and nicely cheap, too);
    • “Surprise Me!” by Horst Moser (on editorial design);
    • ‘The Well-Made Book: Essays and Lectures” by Daniel Berkeley Updike (Updike wrote the classic “Printing Types“);
    • and “Gudrun Zapf von Hesse: Bindings, Handwritten Books, Typefaces, Examples of Lettering and Drawings.”

Figure 4: Gene Gable also recommends books from Mark Batty Publisher, adding that ephemera from Batty’s tenure at type company ITC is also for sale on the site: “This terrific ITC letterpress-printed booklet contains a collection of essays on Eric Gill and his type for the Golden Cockerel Press, and it makes a unique gift at $45.”

John D. Berry


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Sandee Cohen is a New York City-based instructor and corporate trainer in a wide variety of graphic programs, especially the Adobe products, including InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, and Acrobat. She has been an instructor for New School University, Cooper Union, Pratt, and School of Visual Arts. She is a frequent speaker for various events. She has also been a speaker for Seybold Seminars, Macworld Expo, and PhotoPlus conferences. She is the author of many versions of the Visual Quickstart Guides for InDesign.
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