1 DODOcase
From $50 (£50)/www.dodocase.com
The iPad is rapidly becoming the gadget of choice for printers – it enables them to discreetly work from the comfort of their living room (or the confines of their local watering hole) on a sleek, handheld device and look like they’re casually browsing the web rather than beavering away on work-related matters. However, tablet devices can be fragile things so procuring a protective case for these gizmos is a necessary expenditure. Which is where San Francisco-based DODOcase comes in. If you’re a printer who feels uneasy committing to new fangled technology that’s helping to erode print’s role in society then why not pick up a DODOcase and make people think that you’re pouring over an interesting book rather than the online version of Heat magazine. DODOcases, which are available for the iPad ($60) and the latest version of the Kindle e-reader ($50), use book-binding techniques that have been practised for more than a 100 years. By picking up one of these stylish covers you can also sleep easy knowing that you’re doing your bit to ensure that valuable printing skills aren’t as dead as the dodo.
2 Postcarden
£7.50/www.postcarden.com
If you’ve seen one Christmas card you’ve seen them all – picture a snowy landscape or an idyllic winter wonderland complete with shimmering glitter. Out with the old and in with the new – PostCarden is a genius idea designed and produced by London-based Another Studio for Design. The company takes the conventional greeting card and gives it a creative twist with the addition of its mini living garden. Simply unfurl the card – they come in a number of different styles ranging from football pitches through to allotments or, for Christmas, yes you guessed it: a winter wonderland – then water the designated area that’s been impregnated with seeds and sit back and wait for your garden to grow before your very eyes.
3 3D printer
Around $1,225 (£770)/www.makerbot.com
If one abbreviation were to sum up 2010 it would undoubtedly be ‘3D’. This year saw a raft of 3D films hit cinema screens, 3D football hit widescreen TVs in pubs and a rapidly growing range of affordable 3D printers hit the market. Our pick of budget 3D printers is the intriguingly named ‘Thing-O-Matic’ from MakerBot (although with a price tag of just shy of £1,000 you’re going to have to call on a loved one with deep pockets). Once the machine has been assembled it turns plastic cabling into whatever small object (10x10x13cm) that you desire. The company has shipped 30 Thing-O-Matics to addresses at the influential Massachusetts Institute of Technology alone and company founder Bre Pettis hopes that one day every desktop will have one of his 3D printers.
4 Pantone Hotel
€109 (£90)per night/www.pantonehotel.com
Got your Pantone mug? Check. Got your Pantone notebook? Check. Got your Pantone Capsure colour matching gizmo? Check. If you’ve got the Pantone lot then you should really check out and check into the Pantone Hotel in Belgium for a restorative post-festivities getaway. The Brussels hotel is a riot of colours (Pantone of course) and is packed to the rafters with Pantone endorsed goodies, ranging from Pantone mugs, through to Pantone bicycles. It’s also a steal with two-night weekend packages – Friday/Saturday or Saturday/Sunday – available for €109 per night, which includes a bottle of prosecco and two Pantone mugs.
5 Type Trumps
£9.99/www.firebox.com
Do you know your Helvetica from your Arial, your Palatino Linotype from your Garamond and your Times New Roman from your Tahoma? If you do, you’ll need to buy a pack of Type Trumps from online retailer Firebox (if you don’t then it might be wise to pick up a pack as well). Based on the classic Top Trumps game, this stylish deck of cards is targeted at font fanatics. The name of the game is to compare the attributes of various famous fonts. Type Trumps covers areas such as legibility, cost of ownership and even special powers, which, in the case of Futura, is the fact that Stanley Kubrick was a big fan of the type. Each card is written and styled in the relevant typeface so it doubles as a handy reference when undertaking a complex print job. Type Trumps 2 is also now available directly from Type Trumps designer Rick Banks’ website (www.face37.com).
6 Just My Type book
£7.20/www.amazon.co.uk
This fascinating typographic odyssey written by Simon Garfield and published by Profile Books is an entertaining romp that throws up many a fascinating font fact, such as why President Barack Obama opted for Gotham and who invented the motorway signs that are used from the Watford Gap to Abu Dhabi. Just My Type is also something of a feat of font management and pre-flighting, because every time the text mentions a font family it changes into that face, and more than 200 typefaces are used in the text itself – imagine the potential for boo-boos.
7 Lego letterpress
From $10 (£7.50)/www.physicalfiction.com
When you juxtapose the two words they sit uncomfortably, but when you see what can be produced using Lego letterpress it makes you ponder ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’ The project is the brainchild of Samuel Cox and Justin LaRosa who operate under the moniker Physical Fiction, creating pixelated prints that retail from as little as $10 using pieces of lego instead of type. The first series of limited edition prints sold out quickly, but the duo are about to release a second series any day now so pick up a pixelated bargain while you can.
8 PrintWeek subscription
£119/www.printweek.com
Why not get your loved one to buy you a subscription to the UK’s leading print title? For the princely sum of £119 you receive up-to-the-minute news and views on what’s going on in the UK printing industry, plus free supplements throughout the year worth a total of £235, including the PrintWeek Directory, the Buyers’ Guide compendium, the Environment Report and the PrintWeek Top 500.
9 Print Club courses
£45/www.printclublondon.com
Do you want to entice your kids into a career in print, but you’re not quite sure how to sell it to them so that it sounds cool enough to pull them away from their Xbox? Why not enrol them on a workshop hosted by London-based screenprinting outfit Print Club. The company runs screenprinting beginners workshops at its studio in Dalston for £45 per head. During the five-hour session students learn how to print using a photo stencil and how to get artwork ready to put onto a screen. Print Club has also been running Christmas card printing workshops in the run-up to Christmas at £20 per head – the price includes 20 handprinted Christmas cards and envelopes featuring a design created by course attendees. For details on Print Club courses, which run throughout the year, visit www.printclublondon.com
10 Typographic walking tours
£10 (£1 of which is donated to St Bride Library)/www.uktype.com
Christmas excess will undoubtedly hit your waistline hard, so what better way to burn off the pounds than pounding the streets of London or Birmingham on an educational typographic walking tour? The tours run regularly throughout the year and are organised by UK Type, which is run by acclaimed print historian and PrintWeek’s Print’s Past author Caroline Archer. Tours last between one and two hours and are a great way to gain a new perspective on a city that you’re already familiar with – or navigate your way around a place that you have no knowledge of. All of the tours are led by entertaining and highly knowledgeable guides – the London tour is headed up by John Voller an ex-compositor and official guide at St Paul’s cathedral where he specialises in tours of cathedral lettering. Online bookings can be made for any of the tours at UK Type’s website.
