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 2010 Gift Guides.

If you weren’t around for the 2008 and 2009 guides, here’s how it works. Back in 2008, I was inspired by pas­try chef Will Goldfarb’s talk at The Dinner Party. There 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 don’t nec­es­sar­ily fol­low astrol­ogy, 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, time per­mit­ting, 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-related items
• Wednesday: Affordable Art
• Thursday: A Guys’ Guide
• Friday: Holiday Items