Graphic Design Gifts for Aspiring Designers

Robin Williams' Non-Designer's Design Book

Ideal for the beginning desktop publisher or "visual novice." It gives a brief but informative overview of a variety of design principles with heavy emphasis on designing with type. Fun little quizzes help the reader remember what is discussed. The tips here will help new designers choose the right layout to suit the message they want to convey

Tintbook CMYK Process Color Selector

New print designers are often overwhelmed by all there is to know and learn about using color. And books for choosing color can be expensive. Here's an affordable (around $80USD) color selector tool for designers working with CMYK process colors.

Art Explosion 800,000 by Nova Development

Isn't it great when an essential tool is also so much fun? This clip art collection explodes with thousands of royalty-free images and fonts, a printed catalog, Quick Locator Index, and comes with Serif DrawPlus graphics editor too.

Hemera The Big Box of Art

Help the new designer on your gift list liven up their designs with oodles of images. Hemera has dozens of excellent graphics collections crammed full of vector clip art, photos, photo clip art, animations, and Web graphics. There's also an image browser to help wade quickly through those thousands of images.

Galaxy Gauge

You'll rule when you offer your aspiring designer one of these precision rulers. More than a simple ruler,these are all-in-one conversion tools and quick reference guides to bullets, angles, type sizes, screen densities, and much more - all on an 18 inch, clear flexible ruler. Get one for every print designer on your list. They're also great for crafters who do scrapbooking and other paper crafts.

Card-It

Do you know someone who has just started a desktop publishing business? This little diecut tool punches a pair of diagonal slots into a brochure, letter, folder, or other paper so they can attach their business card to anything. Makes a much better impression than using staples, paper clips, or tape.

Idea Index: Graphic Effects and Typographic Treatments

This pocket-size stocking stuffer serves much like a clip file of ideas helping the new designer to get past a design problem, make changes, and brainstorm new ideas. Not intended as a designer showcase, individual concepts are presented, described briefly, and simply illustrated.

Serif PagePlus

Introduce an aspiring designer to page layout with a program that's easy for novice users but has enough professional commericial printing options that it won't be outgrown in a few months. This would be a good gift for that friend who has expressed an interest in desktop publishing and design but hasn't quite taken the plunge yet. Whet their appetite for more.

Adobe Photoshop Elements

If Photoshop is out of your price range, Elements packages many of the same features in a program designed with the novice user in mind. Edit and enhance digital photos, create slide shows and video CDs, organize images with this powerful but easy to use alternative to Adobe Photoshop.

Adobe Type Basics OpenType Edition

A designer can never have enough fonts. Individual quality fonts from the major font foundries can cost $20-$30 each but Adobe packages 65 fonts in one starter collection, including 30 of their best-selling typefaces.