A handy gift guide for the designers in your life

Designers can be a touch particular in the best way. Whether you're shopping for a colleague, surprising someone on your team or treating yourself (because you obviously deserve it), here’s a curated list of tools and treasures to pick from! 

Card decks for colour palettes

If you’ve ever watched a designer disappear into a trance while playing with colours, welcome to your shortcut.

• Zollie palette scout is delightfully tactile and playfully educational. It’s perfect for spreading cards across the table, riffing on unexpected colour pairings and nudging your creativity into new territory.
• Swatchos cards lean more technical, with CMYK references and formulas on each card — ideal for print-heavy designers who want accuracy and inspiration at their fingertips.

These decks turn colour theory into play time! They’re the adult equivalent of hoarding free paint chips from the hardware store... Just me?

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Colour scanner

Environmental branding? Packaging mockups? Repainting the studio wall? This little cube becomes indispensable fast.

The Nix Colour Scanner gives you shockingly accurate colour reads from real-world surfaces and immediately translates them into brand codes or paint equivalents. Many paint companies (like Behr) integrate their systems, so you can scan a wall and say, “Use this exact colour,” removing all guesswork.

For designers who bridge the gap between digital identity and physical space, this tool is a brilliant upgrade.

A good dot-grid notebook

Every designer has a notebook preference, and no two designers agree. But a dot-grid? That’s neutral ground—structured enough for wireframes, loose enough for sketching and perfect for breather-brainstorming.

Bonus points for stickers. Designers love stickers the way raccoons love shiny objects.

They will immediately decorate it.

They will feel joy.

You will be a hero.

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A certificate frame for their RGD Certification

Listen…

Designers famously take forever to frame certificates. Obtaining the RGD designation is a milestone — a badge of commitment to ethical, top-tier design practice. And yet many certificates are… still in the envelope they arrived in.

A simple, elegant certificate frame is both thoughtful and affirming. It says:

“I see how hard you’ve worked — let’s get this baby on the wall.”

3M command hooks

For the artwork they’ve been meaning to hang for two years (it’s fine, it’s fine, we’re all fine).

3M hooks are damage-free and designer-approved — perfect for renters, perfectionists and chronic “I’ll hang it later” folks.

Want to tick it up a notch?

Bring a level, ask where they want it hung. They’ll be smitten!

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Groovy workspace lighting (Hi Govee, we love you)

Lighting really levels up a workspace!

Govee lighting lets you customize scenes, set colours to match your brand palette and adjust brightness or vibes remotely. Flip it to energizing tones on sleepy afternoons or calm neutrals when they want the studio to feel like a well-designed hug.

Ambient lighting = better mood, better workflow, fewer winter blues.

A well-designed mouse

A little well-designed mouse makes a BIG difference.

The Logitech MX series is a favourite in our studio and the design world because:

• the thumb wheel = effortless horizontal panning
• quick DPI switching = smooth transitions for precise photo editing
• ergonomic shape = fewer wrist complaints
• customizable buttons = shortcuts - YAY

If there’s one thing designers universally respect, it’s a shortcut. We love a good shortcut!

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Quality headphones

Designing in a noisy studio or coworking space?

Love your workmates, but sometimes you just need to put on some Sabrina Carpenter and lock in. Am I right?!

Good noise-cancelling headphones give a designer that precious quiet where time ceases to exist. Whether they’re sketching, animating or deep in a brand strategy session, good audio is non-negotiable.

Original artwork

Designers love design, and they love other designers. AND they really love supporting creatives and buying pieces that mean something.

If you’re unsure what style they’re drawn to, try something iconic and graphic, like Raymond Biesinger’s “100 Years of Canadian Design”—a gorgeous, historically rich tribute to the designers who shaped our national visual language.

It’s the kind of piece that sparks conversation and pride! Think Littlest Hobo and classic No Name nostalgia.

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A fancy Japanese mechanical pencil

A designer with a good pencil? Unstoppable.

The Uni Kuru Toga series is legendary — and recently award-winning. The Metal model took home the 2025 Japanese Stationery Award and the Dive model won in 2024. The brilliance is in the mechanism: the lead rotates a tiny amount with each lift of the pencil, keeping the tip perpetually sharp.

A slick sketching experience will have them remembering you care every time they put pencil to paper.