‘Tis the season of giving. Being the world’s pickiest kind of people: anybody who mingles with designers might need some help. Here’s our list of designer-approved Christmas gifts. Careful for the accidental mouse-click-slip as you might end up buying lots of this.
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Postit app x Trello: makes your paper ideas digital
This one is free, and yet it’s immediately one of my favorites. I always thought the Post-it app was cut, but now it has ‘export to Trello’. Gone forever is the dilemma between going tangible with post-its or going organized with Trello, because your paper ideas are now digital. The only collab I would get more happy about is M&M’s ‘doesn’t melt in your hand’ with MacDonalds’ milkshakes.
A goal a day, keeps the doctor away: Momentum app
Nail one daily goal every day, and link them all together until you’re a productivity beast that gets things done.
Need more ideas? Heres an endless book full of them
This ebook is by one of my favorite persons in the world of design and the maker of ‘5 ideas a day’ – David Delahunty. Talking about daily goals: his was to come up with 5 good ideas every day. Then he bundled them in a lovely e-book.
Understanding Design: the most practical design book ever
Sometimes you just have to return to the classics. This one might as well be the best book I’ve ever read on design, For its amazing content, but also because it’s a toilet book: every page is a chapter.
Why read this book? You’re right: Start with Why.
Another classic that we’ve all read blogs about or saw videos of. It’s time to sit down and actually read it in 2020, as it’s about the most important question a designer can ask.
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Think out of the time box: ‘Till watch
A watch can be a real conversation starter. So it this one. If not with others, then with yourself. The ‘Till watch lifts you out of the box every time you look at it.
Socks that go with anything. Literally.
As a sock lover, I fall in love with socks at least 3 times a week. These socks have pretty much every color in the world in them. A fun reason to roll up your pants!
Doodling how it was meant: 3Doodler
3Doodler pens extrude heated plastic that hardens in seconds, allowing you to literally draw in the air. Now the only dimension that limits your doodling is time!
Kidnap any real color into the digital world: Palette’s Cube
The Cube is a portable color digitizer. It captures color from paint, fabric and pretty much any other surface with one tap on the device. Next time you start creating a palette: take a walk outside!
Take notes in not-another-Moleskine: Fieldnotes
Designers need fancy notebooks and simple pencils. It’s fine. If your want something different: Field Notes and see how they just breathe ‘craft’. Made by one of Design’s finest characters Aaron Draplin.
More screen time of the right kind: DIYprintshop
Ever created a graphic that you felt could be on walls? You can screen print it yourself – that’s having a poster as well as making one. We all love process. Excuse for self-gifting: it’s cheap if you calculate how many hours of fun this gives you!
One laser to rule them all: Logitech’s Pebble
If you’ve ever given a presentation, then you know it’s not your fonts that will mess with your head. It’s not the crowd either. It’s the d*mn remote. Logitech decided to sell less buttons and charge more. Why didn’t I think of that?
For the love of books: the Superhero book stand
It’s incredible how reading a book is different from reading a screen. I feel like I retain information from a book much better as well. Writers are heroes!
The end of cables is here: Ikea’s Cork Wireless charger
I can only think of one reason why this doesn’t work: it just looks too nice to cover with a phone.
A mug. For coffee.
Desket is a fun shop that takes Designers’ many quirks to print. Here’s a mug for your daily shot of caffeinated code
The best ideas are noted in the dark
You wake up in the middle of the night with the best idea ever, and then the worst idea is looking at a phone’s screen to note it down. That’s taken care of now.
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Help killing your side projects. So you can do more side projects.
Attention deficit anybody? Hyper-associativity anybody? Keeping focus on 1 thing until it’s finished: it’s tough. The side project flow chart is the decision making helper that helps you stay sane.
What holidays feel like: the Anti phone bag
We fly the world searching for places that still offer us ‘being offline’. Such a place can come to you in the shape of a fun gift.
I’ve always been blown away by the talented people I work with here at Bekk. If I’m ever stuck with some coding challenge, I can always count on receiving a thorough explanation within minutes on our company chat. At every one of our three yearly company gatherings, I’m blown away by the all-Bekk speaker roster, incredible creativity and seamless execution.
We have been a very visible company at conferences all over the world, with talks about everything from Elm to Continuous Design ??. We got this blog, of course, where we share stuff like weekly React newsletters and how you can battle that pesky performance anxiety ?. We’ve made art, designed awards, and won them, too.
I invited all of my colleagues to join me in spreading the love and show that our culture of sharing is infused in the DNA of our company — and the response was nothing short of extraordinary.
We’re incredibly excited, scared, and downright proud to introduce not just one or two, or four, but twelve different Christmas calendars, each covering a topic we’re really, really passionate about.
Twelve different Christmas calendars, each covering a topic we’re really, really passionate about
☁️ Cloud Computing at thecloud.christmas
The rapid evolvement and widespread adoption of the public cloud has made a grand impact on how we write code, how we architect our systems, and even how we think about process. At Bekk we’ve been working with the three major providers for a number of years (sorry, Alibaba Cloud). In this 24-part blog extravaganza we will share some of our knowledge, thoughts and failures! I hope you’re as enthusiastic reading them as we are writing them!
?? CSS at css.christmas
CSS is becoming more fun every day. New features are added, and browsers are becoming more standards compliant, too! This makes it such a pleasure to work with styling web sites these days. This article will focus on tips and tricks to improve your CSS workflow, and make even nicer looking sites!
➡️ Functional Programming at functional.christmas
FP is the hottest programming paradigm right now, and it’s probably thanks to languages like F#, Kotlin and Elm making it more accessible. We’ve been nerding out over functional programming for ages in Bekk, and we have a lot of cool articles for you to nerd out to, too.
☕️ Java at java.christmas
Bekk has been working on some of the heaviest Java backends our country has to offer. That means we’ve seen some things, and learned a bit as well. This calendar will give you 24 ways to improve your Java-fu in 24 days.
? JavaScript at javascript.christmas
JavaScript is the most popular language in the world right now, and for good reason. It’s fun, weird and fantastic — all at the same time. This calendar contains a lot of cool tips, and even a few interviews!
? Kotlin at kotlin.christmas
After Kotlin blew up in 2017, we’ve been using this amazing programming language extensively on a lot of projects. Some places, we even started migrating old Java-code to Kotlin! This calendar is written by some of the greatest Kotlin-programmers in Norway — you have a lot to look forward to!
? Machine Learning at ml.christmas
Each day until Christmas we will give you a brief introduction into a topic related to the exciting field of machine learning and data science. Although there will be some deep dives into statistics and mathematics, everyone should be able to understand the content of this calendar. Whether you are an experienced data scientist, an aspiring novice or just curious about data science — this is the Christmas calendar for you.
? Open Source at opensource.christmas
We use open source software every single day. A lot of us even contribute back, with bug fixes, documentation tweaks, or even brand new features! This Christmas calendar will be all about open source software, and the lessons we’ve learnt being a part of that for the last two decades.
? Product Development at product.christmas (in Norwegian)
This one is a bit different. It’s 24 podcast episodes — in Norwegian — about how we do product development here at Bekk. I sure hope you speak Norwegian, because the content is just amazing!
Available, of course, in your favorite podcast app. Just search for “Kaffeprat hos Bekk”
⚛️ React at react.christmas
React is more popular than ever, and — thanks to the innovations of the React team — more capable as well. We’ve written hundreds of React apps the last couple of years, and we dare say we know a thing or to about how to do it right. Look forward to 24 amazing articles in quick succession.
? Security at security.christmas
A lot of our clients are government agencies, or huge financial organizations. Knowing how to secure their information is critical! Luckily, Bekk has a solid team of security experts that are looking forward to share their knowledge with you for a second consecutive year!
?? User Experience at ux.christmas (partly in Norwegian)
What can one expect from a UX advent calendar from Bekk? UX.christmas is a collaborative project where 24 writers have written as many articles, full of industry-relevant tidbits. The “windows” of this advent calendar cover a variety of topics like creativity, storytelling, and product development. Everything from variable fonts and dark patterns (on Friday the 13th of course ?) to hypothesis testing and digital accessibility.
Each of these lovely web sites will share a new article every day from December 1st through December 24th. If everything goes well, we’ll have created 288 articles about technology, design and innovation. In 24 days.
If you’re looking for a daily overview, you can find that at bekk.christmas.
We’re far from the first ones to create an IT-related Christmas calendar. Advent of Code is a huge international success. In Norway, knowit and others has been doing a great job for years.
The Bekk Christmas calendar adventure started in 2017, where I bought the domain name React.Christmas on a whim.
Next year, I got a few of my colleagues to join me in a repeat effort. We wrote a blog post about the entire experience, but long story short, we ended up writing 96 blog posts about React, Elm, JavaScript and IT security.
This year, we wanted to show off an even wider variety of the incredible people we work with. For those of you who don’t know Bekk, we’re a company of ~450 people, specializing in technology, design and business management. That’s a lot of knowledge not covered by front-end technology and a security calendar!
To kick us off, Erik Mathisen— our resident copywriter — held an amazing course in how to write well and to keep it short. A lot of the people that signed up as authors (there’s over a 100 of us! ?) had no previous experience writing articles like these — so we had a lot of learning to do.
We even live-streamed the talks we held on Twitch to our Trondheim, Norway office — which is also joining the fun!
The artwork featured in our calendars are definitely one of a kind. Well, it’s actually 288 different one of a kinds. Our resident crazy generative artist Kjetil Golid went all out for us, generating a unique piece of art for every day of every calendar. The algorithms are implemented in JavaScript, and based on different Bekk-esque color schemes, and are just amazing.
You can see more of his artwork on Instagram.
Whether you’re making a Christmas card for family and loved ones, or commissioned work, this collection should come in handy.
It includes completely free symbol fonts, safe to use in both personal and commercial projects, to help you be prepared for anything. Snowflakes, Santas, Christmas trees, ornaments, and lights plus many more are listed in this nifty collection. Enjoy!
All the icon fonts included in this article are 100% free for both personal and commercial use.
Please note that not all icons are shown in the previews.
Free Christmas trees and ornaments icon fonts
Vintage Christmas
A delightful mix of vintage Christmas clipart, with everything from carolers, ornaments, gingerbread man, vintage gifts, Christmas tree, and many more. Created by Woodcutter.
Christmas Icons
This font has everything you need for Christmas, mittens, laughing Santas, snow globe, ornaments, trees, snowflakes, angel, snowman etc. Created by Woodcutter.
Xmas TFB Christmas
Includes plenty of Christmas trees ranging from classic to abstract, wreaths, snowmen, Santa sleighs, ornaments, and gifts. Created by kaiserzharkhan.
Christmas Ornaments
An assorted collection of Christmas ornaments and decorations, plus gifts, socks, snowmen, and more. Created by Ding Bang.
Gift Icons
A whole icon font dedicated to Christmas gifts. Small, big, open, with ribbon, and other types, you’ll find them all in this font created by Woodcutter.
Paper Snowflakes
Like the name says, it includes paper snowflakes in 2 styles: outline (on lowercase letters) and full (on uppercase/caps). Created by Shara Weber.
Christmas
Includes ornaments, snowmen, Santa heads, Feliz Navidad sign, bells, Winnie the Pooh, teddybear, candy, Christmas sock, nativity scene, and more. Created by Ding Bang.
Christmas People Ding
A whimsical doodle-style Christmas themed font with almost childish style. Perfect for fun projects or wishing Merry Christmas to loved ones, it includes 2 different stroke widths (on uppercase and lowercase). Created by MeCreativa.
Faux Snow
A very fit name for a font comprising of many different snowflakes. Created by Brian Kent [Ænigma Fonts].
Toy Train
A magic Christmas train that includes all letters in locomotive style (on caps/uppercase letters) and in wagon style (on lowercase letters). It also includes an engine without letter (on * asterisk character), a buffer (on space key), a plain track without buffer (on _ underscore character), and {, }, [, and ]. Created by West Wind Fonts.
BONUS
Typographers Holidayfont
A 3-in-1 holiday font that includes Christmas, New Year’s Eve, and Easter! Created by Dieter Steffmann.