Gift giving guide

[FlipMode]

Hi. I noticed over the past few days of the trick or treating event that people felt they couldn't make anything or that they were struggling or ideas. I made two things for my recipient and thought I would backtrack to figure how I decided and would share those steps here (if this should be in announcements, move it there but I couldn't post there).
I have broken it down into four steps below as guidelines but please don't think I am telling you what you have to do, this thread is just to help you get some ideas and get the ol' noodle working.

1) know your recipient.

Okay so mine was for Nelkie, whom I have never spoken to before. But does that mean I can't find out anything about them? Nope. If you are paired with someone you don't know, go to their profile and check their hobbies and interests, maybe scan through some of their posts. This way you can see if they have an OC, what bands they like, how often they read or wrote fan fiction and all other kinds of things. Which brings me onto step two.

2) Make it relatable.

One of the things I found out is that my recipient was pretty young; so if you read the story thing I made its got a lot of very light hearted humour in there, even the sig I made also has.
Let's say for all intents that you decide to make a drawing, well instead of just a picture of a Simba, why not add something that make it a shot more personal.
I.E if you got DGFone, make it planes related, or if you got Buffy make it something to do with animals, particularly dogs.
So find their interest, and play off there ( this is why people should be as transparent as possible)

So we now know our person a lot more and we have decided on a theme, but what to do... Sig, drawing etc....? Well....

Step 3) play to your strength

Just because we happen to have a lot of graphic designers here does not mean you have to make a signature.
If you are a good writer or role player, and step 1 and 2 show your person has an OC, write some fan fiction for the person. If you are good at drawing make it that.
If you can't make a sig but want to then I'd strongly encourage you to try Sophiecub or Natalie's sig tutorials first.
Here's some other ideas though.

YouTube video
Song
Poem
Drawing
Sig
Desktop background
Cards
Poster

Have fun making it too, the more you enjoy making it, the more time you will invest, thus the more the person will appreciate it.

4) realise there is no such thing as a bad gift

Simple really, the reason you can't think of an idea is that in your mind you think the person isn't going to like the idea / gift and quite franky that is just not going to happen.
If you follow the steps above, go with your result regardless of the feeling that the recipient will not like it, because I promise you that they will! And knowing this will help you to be ever more creative.

That's my post. I encourage you to post questions and comments below and share your own tips if you have any.

~ Flip

[Azdgari]

1) cut a hole in a box
...

[FlipMode]

^ I think it depends on the recipient, though.