2012 Holiday Gift Guide for Graphic Designers

In honor of the holidays, we came up with a holiday gift guide for graphic designers, which is what we did last year. Below is a list of some of our favorite gift ideas for graphic designers for the 2012 holidays. If you are shopping for a graphic designer and are stumped on what to buy, consider some of our suggestions:

1- A Lynda subscription: We know a ton of great graphic designers with tons of knowledge in the field, but no matter how much they know they always want to know more.  A subscription to Lynda.com is a perfect gift for that graphic designer in your life. Lynda is one of the best online resources available sharing tutorials and video lessons on popular techniques for graphic and web designers. Lynda has two packages available for their monthly subscription plans.

2- Digital Arts magazine subscription: Why not purchase a magazine of Digital Arts for the graphic designer in your life. Digital Arts is a great magazine for designers covering a wide range of topics from digital creative to feature tips and inspiration to reviews. Each magazine issue comes with a CD containing free stock photos, fonts, vectors and tutorials. This is the perfect gift that keeps giving year round for graphic designers.

3- Tablets: Okay, we'll admit it!  Our graphic designers here at Integraphix have an obsession with tablets. A tablet is a computer input device that has a pen and a drawing surface for digital illustration. The tablet is used in place of a mouse and is used to create complex designs efficiently and in a timely manner. As designers in Chicago, we strongly suggest all graphic designers to at least pick up a tablet and try it out for a day! We're sure you'll see how much potential it has to enhance your design capabilities!

4- iStock credit purchase: As web and graphic designers, we are constantly scrolling through different art and stock photos for our projects. If you are looking for a good gift idea for a graphic designer, consider purchasing credits to iStock.com. IStock has the largest library of stock photos and is a very popular resource for designers. 

5- CSSEdit 2: If you are looking for different types of software for the graphic designer your shopping for, check out CSSEdit 2. This program is specifically for Mac users and gives designers the ability to easily make changes to CSS coding. This software allows graphic designers to easily make minor edits to web designs. It’s a great resource for designers that may not have web developer capabilities.

6- App pillow: A silly and fun present that would make any graphic designer smile on Christmas day is the “app pillow.” App pillows are simply square, plush pillows that have different symbols that represent the products in the line of the Adobe Creative Suite. Each pillow is colorful and has abbreviations that represent an Adobe product. Not only is it a comfortable creative gift idea, but it can be purchased for under $20!

Looking for more holiday gift ideas?  Feel free to comment below or contact us.