a flomm holiday gift guide for every budget

Some­thing bor­rowed, some­thing neu, some­thing FLOMM.

Giv­ing the Gift of FLOMM this year is rather easy. And it’ll sur­prise your re­cip­i­ents with some­thing a bit dif­fer­ent than the stan­dard store-bought sweater, tie or jack­et. Es­pe­cial­ly the part where they ask, what the hell is all this?

FLOMM = ex­cel­lent con­ver­sa­tion starter.
Es­pe­cial­ly if you’ve had an art his­to­ry class. Or at the very least, vis­it­ed a mu­se­um once.

So,
here’s some ideas that in­volve spend­ing or not spend­ing, mak­ing or just be­ing a FLOMM mod­ernist this season:
 

1.   game as gift!
The Ap­ple App Store does NOT al­low one to eas­i­ly buy a spe­cif­ic prod­uct as a gift (they have a lot of rules like this), but a sim­ple store-bought Ap­ple Gift Card can do the trick any­way – and they’re avail­able near cash reg­is­ters in just about every re­tail place you’ll be vis­it­ing, or online.

They come in sim­ple de­nom­i­na­tions – pick what’s af­ford­able – and don’t for­get to in­clude a hand­writ­ten note of recommendations:

            USE THIS DAMN CARD FOR COOL STUFF, LIKE
            FLOMM! THE BAT­TLE For MOD­eRN 1923 (of course)
            (then list your) favourite games
            favourite mu­sic tracks
            favourite apps
            favourite books

Of course, you could also list things your re­cip­i­ent may ac­tu­al­ly want. Not just your needs. But who does that anyway?

Also, keep in mind that friends and fam­i­ly may also be a bit spite­ful, so con­sid­er rec­om­mend­ing things they would ac­tu­al­ly hate so when they do make their pur­chase, they’ll end up with the right gift:

            You’ll re­al­ly HATE this FLOMM thing.
            I hate it too.
            Don’t know why any­one would play it.

Re­cip­i­ent doesn’t have an iPhone? Maybe they have an iPad. Or maybe they know some­one who has an iPad. Pay it for­ward, sug­gest they Give the Gift of FLOMM to some­one who’d love to play.
 

2.   swag and cards!
If your fam­i­ly is like mine, for­get­ting the card will lead to years of com­ments – so you’d bet­ter make sure you have the right in­ten­tions in that lit­tle envelope.

In­spired by the Star­bucks red cup con­tro­ver­sy (which still has my head spin­ning as to why this ac­tu­al­ly is a news item), we’ve turned the FLOMM game metaphor – mod­ern v. tra­di­tion – into a cou­ple of hol­i­day cards:

Our TRA­DI­TION­AL Hol­i­day Card has float­ing snowflakes backed by im­pres­sion­ist-in­spired game art and our icon­ic ‘TRA­DI­TION WINS!’ mes­sage in­side. We’ve also left room for your per­son­al­ized hol­i­day mes­sage – and do make sure you men­tion the cor­rect­ly cel­e­brat­ed hol­i­day. Peo­ple can get all butt hurt over stuff like this.

Our MOD­ERN Hol­i­day Card states ‘PEACE and LOVE’ (thanks RINGO) over our Me­trop­o­lis-in­spired game art. Ab­stract con­struc­tivist art in­side, with room for what­ev­er mes­sage you want. 

And it may take some time to fig­ure out the mes­sage on the front. A card that’ll make ’em think. Ab­stract, mod­ern, very, very FLOMM.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly,
we have a lot MOR in our FLOMMHAUS store – MOR hol­i­day items – stick­ers to shirts to postage stamps to gui­tar picks to pillows.

 

 

3.   read­ing!
Every­thing in FLOMM has some­thing to do with art his­to­ry.

Dig­ging through and fig­ur­ing out all the im­ages is a ma­jor part of the game. As I’ve said in a few talks, “FLOMM is ONE BIG east­er egg.”

The FLOMM Bib­li­og­ra­phy (go here) cites sources (MLA style; or­ga­nized by sub­ject) with cap­sule re­views, book and li­brary links (I don’t con­done steal­ing li­brary books, but it could be rather fun to give the DEWEY num­ber as a gift, let your gif­tee work for their prize).

Many of the books I’ve read (or skimmed) in prep­ping the FLOMM game are out of print and can be found in­ex­pen­sive­ly online.

Browse through, ad­ven­tures and BIG ACA­D­E­M­IC WORDS await!

 

4.   buy some damn art!
There’s a lot of art prints avail­able in stores – but did you know for about the same price, you could of­ten get some­thing unique di­rect­ly from an artist?

The FLOMM Re­sources page lists artists, mu­se­ums, char­i­ties and more. Go find stuff. Bound to be a few gift­ing ideas float­ing around in there.

Erik Jones

 

5.   make your own damn art!
I can’t draw is an ex­cuse. I hear it a lot cause I teach art.

One can learn to draw. Through prac­tice or oth­er tools. Do an il­lus­tra­tion. Do an ab­stract il­lus­tra­tion, avoid the ob­vi­ous stick fig­ures be­gin­ning artists do. Go to Pin­ter­est and get in­spired. In­vite a friend to draw with you. Get a do­geared copy of The Nat­ur­al Way to Draw … Or set up a time to recre­ate my own BAU sem­i­nar se­ries.

Just don’t ex­pect re­sults overnight. See where new tech­niques and skills can take you. All one usu­al­ly needs is some tools, pa­per, time and imagination.

Your friends or fam­i­ly will ei­ther be sup­port­ive. Or not. Who cares? Make anyway.
 

 

6.   lis­ten!
We’re still com­pil­ing (and ac­tu­al­ly, mas­ter­ing) as I write this. But the FLOMM Sound­cloud ac­count is go­ing to get a bit busy this De­cem­ber. We’ll have a few mix­es of our sig­na­ture track (FIRE by Chelsea Davis), amongst oth­er experiments.

Down­load, make a mix­tape. Need in­spi­ra­tion? Check out our avant garde playlists on Spo­ti­fy, we post them every Mon­day morn­ing on our FLom­mis­chen blog.

Il­lus­trate your mix­tape with one of our wall­pa­pers. Pair your own mix­es with a FLOMM poster or mug.
 

 

7.   flomm free­bies
Some­times pay­ing for things is over­rat­ed. So we have a few free­bies float­ing about:

Be­sides our free wall­pa­pers, we also have a free DIT­TO ver­sion of FLOMM AMONGst The MOD­eRNS. Just down­load and print our free PDF on your favourite pa­per. (Or buy the signed, of­fi­cial ver­sion here.)

Not enough? Copy and paste an ar­ti­cle from der­Tung. And since you’re not spend­ing any­thing at this point, tell your re­cip­i­ent to go buy their own damn copy of FLOMM.

Cause re­al­ly, if you just got them a sweater, tie or jack­et none of any of this would re­al­ly be nec­es­sary anyway.

—steve mehal­lo

Flom­mist Steve Mehal­lo is a graph­ic de­sign­er, il­lus­tra­tor, font de­sign­er, ed­u­ca­tor, food­ie and gad­fly. He is the cre­ator and founder of FLOMM!

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