The Browse No. 5: The Art of The Gift Guide
My tips for thoughtful gift giving, along with some gift ideas from my browsing history.
The Browse is a bi-weekly curated list of objects of affection, unique shops/brands and style content I’ve been browsing.
Eeek — sorry for the delay since my last post. I’m heading into hibernation season a little early so I’ve been a bit slower with putting out content. But here we go!
We’re barely halfway through November and my feed is already oversaturated gift guides of all shapes, sizes and niches. Whether you have a LA hot girl in your life that’s hard to shop for or a coffee lover in your life, these guides have you covered. Personally, my favorite gift guides are the hyper-specific ones that hinge on magical realisim, such as this guide to this siren-inspired gift guide that features ocean spray, fish-shaped combs and freshwater pearl jewelry.
Putting together a gift guide truly feels like painting a portrait of somene — even if they’re imaginary — and figuring out the items, services or pieces would fit into their life perfectly.
I think the reason so many of us enjoy putting together gift guides is for the same reason: it’s for the fun of curation. Of course, not everyone in your life will fit in a perfectly, neat box and/or theme. So that’s where the second fun part of gift giving comes in: personality analysis. This is the side of it that many of us enjoy as well, in the same way it’s fun to guess someone’s astrological sign or what their coffee order is.
So how do you find the perfect gift? Personally, I like to follow a couple guiding philosophies for when I’'m browsing gifts for others:
The spectrum of usability. To me, usability can fall into a couple different categories:
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