25 Awesome Gift Ideas for Designers & Developers

The holiday season of 2009 is upon us and if you’re not sure what to get your designer or developer friend, family member, and/or significant other, we’re here to help.

Be sure to add your own wish list for this holiday in the comments if they’re not on here!

Gear and Gadgets

1. iPhone ($99 – $299)

The iPhone will probably be the most requested gift of the season, but there’s a chance your designer or developer already has one because of its popularity in the industry, so make sure to check before you get one.

2. The Smashing Book (~$30)

The Smashing Book will be one of the most influential web design and development books to hit the market and will be a wonderful book to add to any designer or developer’s book collection.

3. Macbook Pro (starts at $1,199)

Apple’s new Macbook Pro is leaps and bounds above any other laptop in the market and is a favorite amongst the web professional crowd. It comes in three sizes: 13inch, 15inch, and 17inch.

4. Kindle 2 ($259)

The Kindle 2 lets you read e-books on its digital screen. It conveniently carries around your favorite books so that you can access them anytime and anywhere.

5. Notebooks: Moleskine (~$12) or Field Notes (~$10)

These fanatically followed high-quality notebooks are popular gifts for creatives and can be used for numerous purposes such as sketches, idea gathering, and task management. They come in a variety of formats: lined, grid/graph paper, and lined.

6. A Wacom Tablet (starts at ~$200)

The Wacom tablet, a computer input device that features a pen and a drawing surface for digital illustration, is far superior to the traditional mouse when it comes to complex designs.

7. Magic Mouse ($69)

Apple’s revolutionary new multi-touch mouse is a great present for Mac users that will satisfy their functional and aesthetical demands.

8. USB coffee heater (~$9)

Designers and developers often love caffeinated hot drinks such as coffee and tea, and what better way to keep their drink warm than a portable USB-powered liquid warmer that plugs into their computer.

9. Paper Email (~$4)

Geeks who love writing on paper can find appreciation in this "old school" notebook that’s creatively designed as an email message.

10. App Pillows ($15)

These unique pillows are modeled after the icons of popular designer/developer desktop applications such as Photoshop, Dreamweaver, and Illustrator.

11. G-drive (starts at $179)

G-technology makes outstanding external hard drives that are good-looking to boot, designers and developers can always use the extra hard drive space.

12. Typophile T-shirts (starts at $15)

Let your designers express their love for fonts and typography by giving them these trendy t-shirts.

13. IronKey (starts at $79)

IronKeys are secure portable USB drives that have a metallic-like, slick surface. They’re great for people who work intimately with computers.

14. Staple Free Stapler (~$10)

These staplers require no staples, and can be cool and environmentally friendly way of attaching paper together (such as invoices, sketches, wireframes, etc.).

15. Bose QuietComfort (~$300)

These headphones are truly high-end; they’re great for tuning out background noise when working in a noisy environment, and amazing for listening to music.

Subscriptions

16. Lynda.com subscription ($375 a year)

Lynda.com is one of the best online resources available, with video lessons and how-to’s for popular web technologies and desktop applications.

17. .NET Magazine (~$113 for 13 issues)

.NET Magazine is the premier top-selling magazine for web designers and developers. Each issue comes with a CD that contains useful resources to supplement the issue’s topics.

18. Layers (~$50 for two years)

Layers is a magazine that focuses on how-to’s for the popular Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Flash, etc.).

19. Digital Arts (~$195 a year)

Digital Arts is another top-notch magazine for digital creatives, featuring tips, inspiration, and relevant reviews. Each issue comes with a CD containing demos and freebies (stock photos, vectors, fonts, etc.) to keep your designer fully stocked with digital art resources.

20. Threadless monthly t-shirt ($200)

Threadless is a popular online retailer that sells creative and trendy t-shirts such gaming tees, which is a pastime common among designers and developers. The subscription will send your designer or developer a shirt every month for a year.

21. iStockphoto.com subscription (starts at ~$970)

iStockphoto.com is a place to get stock photos, something designers can’t get enough of. This gift is on the higher end, but will be very useful for work-related purposes.

Software

22. CSSEdit 2 (~$45)

By far one of the favorite CSS editors among designers and developers who use Apple computers, this application will give them great control over how their websites look.

23. Textmate (~$59)

Textmate is a simple clean text editor that is supported by multiple languages for Mac users. It’s handy and amazing as a source code editor, supporting languages such as HTML, CSS, and PHP.

24. Coda ($99)

Coda is a great integrated development environment for Mac users that’s intuitive to use for developing/designing websites; if your designer/developer doesn’t have it yet, this would be a wonderful present to give.

25. Things ($~50)

This Mac app will keep your designer/developer organized so they can be at the family reunion on time. It also has a gorgeously simplistic user interface.

Got more gift ideas for designers and developers? Share them in the comments!

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