New Year gifts to keep the year bright

A gift is part of the Christmas atmosphere

A Christmas gift for the team is more than an object with a logo on it. It sets the mood in the office for a week or two, it becomes part of the atmosphere, and it gives people a reason to stop for an hour and mark the year together.

A good gift should suit the people receiving it, fit into their working day, and hold on to some of the festive feeling without losing its use once the decorations come down.

Useful stationery for work

Stationery is one of the corporate gift options that fits into everyday work without any effort. Pens stay close at hand and get used, instead of becoming another branded item in a drawer. For a Christmas gift they are a simple and practical choice that works for a whole team, though what decides whether one is still there in March is the refill and whether the clip breaks the first time it goes into a jacket pocket.

Notebooks work in much the same way, as simple and useful things that always have a place on a desk. Good paper, a practical format and a clean design make them better to use and turn them into part of the working day rather than a shelf object. None of that photographs well, and all of it decides whether the notebook gets used or filed.

A set is a decision, not a box

Most office sets are three items in a box because three looked about right. A set works when the items were chosen together, with one colour reference, decoration methods that hold that colour on different materials, and a single visual idea running through paper, metal and fabric. Most sets start in our office range, and they can pull from the wider catalogue as well. A water bottle stays on the desk all year, and a cooler bag leaves the office and comes back in the summer.

A logo starts a different life on the product

On a screen a logo can be thin, detailed and complex. On a product it becomes part of a material, a shape and a size, and that is where it shows how well it works in the real world.

We adapt the logo to each type of product so that it keeps its character, its clarity and its recognisability at any size, on any material and with any decoration method. For every item we choose the placement and the scale that hold the brand together across the range. The result is one logo that works with the same confidence on a pen, a notebook, a garment or a box.

New year as another reason to be together

A corporate gift becomes part of an occasion when the team puts work aside for a while and simply spends time together. A small celebration, a shared table, presents and a couple of hours without calls or deadlines create that sense of a year brought to a close.

The gift becomes part of the memory of that day. The objects stay behind after the celebration and bring the day back in ordinary working life, as a reminder of the people this year was spent with.

It is easier when the sets arrive already assembled and labelled by name, so nobody has to unpack boxes on the last evening and the handover does not turn into a job of its own.

Five items that hold up in a Christmas set

The sections above cover how a set is put together. These five are what usually ends up inside one, chosen for the part of the year when the decorations are long down.

• VINGA Sortino Cooler Bag Grande: the item that leaves the office entirely and comes back in the summer. It is the hardest one to justify on unit price alone, and the one people remember in July.
• Pizza Shopping Bag: what the set travels home in on the last day, so nobody carries four loose objects out to the car park. It keeps its use long after the box it came in is gone.
• Utah Tritan Bottle 500ml: the item that stays on the desk all year rather than only through January. The mark sits in plain view on it longer than on anything else in the set, so approve the placement on a sample rather than on screen.
• Odense Food Storage Container 700ml: the least festive thing in the box and the most used. A lunch container gets opened five days a week, which is more contact than any notebook gets.
• Sara Porcelain Mug: the mug people reach for over the office ones by February. Porcelain takes decoration differently from plastic and fabric, so the same logo needs its own file for it.

Sets are handed over in the last week before the holidays, and that week is the worst possible time to find out that a quantity is wrong. Stock held with us means a department can order early and top up later, rather than building the same parcel twice.