Blockchain Designers Holiday Gift Guide

An incredibly niche list of what to get for that special nerd

With the holidays approaching, some of you might have a blockchain designer in your life. Maybe they’re a friend or family member and you’d like to get them something they really need this year—you’ve never understood what they do, but they will not stop talking about it. You’re pretty sure “token curated registry” is a jumble of words they made up to mess with you.

Maybe they’re a person on your team and you’d like to show them how much you appreciate them, even if you don’t get why they go on and on about personas, card sorts, and typefaces. Can’t you just buy them a journey map for the holidays if they like them so much?

The intersection of blockchain and design is a nerd-filled space for sure, so we asked some Web3 designers what they’d really like this year so that you, their loved one/friend/enemy/acquaintance can hit a holiday home run.

Because there’s so much travel

Web3 is global by nature, so designers in this space find themselves traveling quite a bit for both user research and conferences/meet-ups.

• We might say we’re gonna get work done on the plane but that is always a lie: Zach recommends Nintendo Switch (great games for the airplane are Mario Odyssey, Thumper, or Mario Kart if you’ve got a travel buddy).
• #HODL Luggage tags
• Tech accessories are high on the list: Apple USB Chargers and earphones because you can never freaking have enough of them. For travel batteries Zach says, “I love my Anker but it’s is a brick. My buddy loves his TravelCard.” Aqeel Mohammad recommends the Portable Ergonomic Laptop Stand for the crypto nomads and hackathon warriors.
• Staying healthy is a struggle with everyone bringing their international germs with them, so consider a gift of Theraflu (for conference crud, but also helps with jetlag) and lypho-spheric vitamin c (stay healthy, fam!). Add some melatonin to a plane sleep kit and your favorite blockchain designer can arrive refreshed.
• Things get costly, so an AirBNB Gift Card is ideal. Additionally, Zach advises getting a Chase Sapphire Reserve — 3x points for travel and no currency conversion fees.
• Knowing what timezone you are in day to day gets surprisingly difficult. Amy suggests the Time Buddy App! or There.pm. Nguyet suggests Entrain an app to help you adjust to different time zones by utilizing light to shift your sleep cycle in a new location. A currency conversion app like Elk (sadly iOS only) helps designers get a handle on how much that fancy latte actually costs on the other side of the world.

Apparel

How will people know they’re a designer if they don’t have over-designed graphic tees? A must.

• Cotton Bureau has some of our favorites: Refactor, Designerd.
• Only the coolest can pull this “Garphic Design” cap off.
• Super sassy Crypto swag.
• The Ethereum Rainbow Prism t-shirt is practically a uniform at this point.
• Octavian Todirut suggests these awesome design related pins, another staple of design fashion.

Always Learning

Anyone in the crypto/blockchain space knows that it’s a series of rabbit holes to fall down; you’re never done learning the history of money, economics, philosophy, game mechanics, political science, and of course design. Needless to say people who like to learn have a good time around here—so you really can’t go wrong getting a book for your blockchain designer.

Andy suggests these must-reads:

• Economic Science Fictions — A new MIT Press book I just bought that talks about how sci fi motivates new approaches to economics. ❤
• Thinking in Systems — The bible of systems thinkers.
• Bad Blood — The story of Theranos. Don’t be like Elizabeth Holmes. Take your time, and build ideas that will last. You won’t be able to put this book down.

Beltran recommend these two books that talk about psychology relevant to the blockchain space:

• How We Decide — Jonah Lehrer
  & Thinking Fast and Slow — Daniel Kahneman
  When is it appropriate to use your emotional or logical brain to make a decision? How do you guide your users to a satisfying choice or handle a user’s anxiety over risk and loss aversion?

Amy suggests:

• Creativity, Inc — Inspiring book by the Pixar co-founder and president on creativity in business and leadership.
• Redesigning Leadership — All his books are really good, but for those focused on creative leadership: a very short read and lessons from John Maeda for a new generation of creative tech leaders.
• Kern and Burn: Conversations With Design Entrepreneurs — Beautiful conversations on entrepreneurship, exploring successes, failures and resilience from designers.

Zach recommends these gems:

• Lost and Founder—Fishkin is more honest than any Medium post about what it’s like to start a company, scale it, and then kinda have to sell it.
• Make Time—Ever feel like you need an extra day or, like, ten extra days? Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky take a Design Sprint-ish approach to time management that’ll transform how you navigate your days.
• Principles—Learn from a master problem solver; Dalio outlines a unique and interesting methodology for problem solving and creating feedback loops for your team.
• Everything for Everyone—The history of decentralized ownership and governance, for the crypto-anarchist in your life.

Crypto Specific

• Lili advises sending unique greeting eCards while supporting awesome freedom-preserving projects with Radi.Cards. Each RadiCard is a unique NFT, a censorship resistant internet collectible built on Ethereum and PFS.

Radi.Cards

• Hardware wallets are always in season: Ledger Nano S, Trezor, Keepkey. Plus, Nguyet adds, “You can use a Yubikey as a back up authenticator. Everyone should get one of these if they haven’t. It’s very important to stay secure online. For MBP, I recommend the 5C Nano, which is that little nub that you can keep plugged in to your laptop for convenience.”
• Demonstrate your love for your blockchain designer by attempting to purchase ETH and doing something with it (and writing down everything you experience for user research, which is the real gift). Amy suggests a Cryptokitty or donating ETH with WeTrust Spring (when you donate, you get a NFT Shiba!). Nguyet says the same, “Ether Cards! OR gift them to your family as a way to onboard them to learning about cryptocurrency like Ether. But also as a meta-goal, user-research with them and learn what their on-boarding experience is really like. Get your entire family excited about Eth!”
• Buy a piece of Eve Sussman’s previously museum-exclusive video: 89 Seconds. Andy says, “I recently went to one of her focus groups for this and it was delightful.”

Stuff designers always love

Notebooks, pens, games, and curated anything = design catnip.

• Zach says, “I buy Baron Fig’s floppy-cover dot-grid Vanguards, 9 at a time. I love these things. Versatile, travel friendly, great feel. I get my best thinking done in them.” Another great notebook is the Dot Grid Book designed by the Behance team. The paper is high quality and it has 2 perforations.
• “The Muji Gel Ink Ballpoint 0.5mm pen in black is the most perfect mass market pen ever designed. It rolls softly across every type of paper: soft, hard, hungry, skinny, textured, indifferent. While their 0.38mm equivalent demands too much precision for the uninitiated, and the 0.7mm is too clunky, the 0.5mm has the right balance of weight and precision. The selfless designer might consider purchasing the 5 pack so as to liberally distribute them amongst friends, peers & enemies,” says Alex Singh.
• Andy advocates giving designers the tools that look fun but are actually for work: A box of Sharpies in all colors possibly available, little Legos for prototyping, and The Thing From The Future — speculative design game.
• Amy thinks the coolest gift would be a membership to the Current Museum: A digital cooperative focused on contemporary media art where a certain level of membership allows you to take part in curation.

Ethereum has taken over their life

The lines between personal and professional seem really blurry in this ecosystem, it’s easy to get overwhelmed with all the cool stuff happening, things to work on, and new friends to make. Self-care is a must.

• Andy’s strategy is distraction, she recommends a “GameStop gift card so I can play games instead of thinking about Eth.” Or how about art as self-care? “A membership to the local modern art museum, preferably MoMA in NYC. For a big ticket item, a paid trip to MeowWolf in New Mexico to see one of the coolest, biggest narrative art installations in the world.
• Lili says something as simple as a plant helps, “Airplants—get them from local or online shops such as https://www.airplantcity.com/ (US) and https://tillairplant.com/ (EU).”
• Both Nguyet and Lili agree that meditation, yoga, and exercise make a big difference. Lili suggests a voucher for a local meditation or yoga class is great for getting your designer out of the house/office and away from work. When time is short, Nguyet says, “the Headspace app — I relearned how to meditate with this adorable app, with just 3–5 minutes a day. Changed my life.” She adds, “An online subscription to Barre3 — I love this because they have online sessions ranging from 10 minutes to an hour so I can find movements and balance whenever you can fit it in my schedule. I’ve been using this service for the past 2 years to help me find some sanity no matter where my travels take me.”