Design Work Life: Cataloging Inspiration Daily

If you had any time off last week for Thanksgiving, I hope you enjoyed it! This week will be a lit­tle bit dif­fer­ent as it will mostly be devoted to the 2009 Gift Guides.

If you weren’t a reader last year at this time, I’ll just give you some quick back­ground on my approach. Last year I was inspired by pas­try chef Will Goldfarb’s talk at The Dinner Party, where he pre­sented the notion that there are 6 bil­lion peo­ple in the world and only 12 horo­scopes, or astro­log­i­cal signs. So in the­ory, a chef should be able to cre­ate 12 dishes that will please everyone.

And even though I’m not par­tic­u­larly a believer in horo­scopes, it seemed like an inter­est­ing idea to apply to gift giv­ing. So the heart of the post­ings this week are four guides devoted to the ele­ments: earth, air, water, and fire.

They will be fol­lowed by a few other top­i­cal Gift Guides, and reg­u­lar inspi­ra­tion posts will be sprin­kled through­out the week. Here’s a quick sched­ule if you’re look­ing out for one in particular:

• Monday: Earth, Air, Fire, Water
• Tuesday: Typography
• Wednesday: Affordable Art
• Thursday: For the Guys
• Friday: Happy Holidays