After resolving to work on gifts last week, I spent time the past week in ideating on data-based gifts.

I discovered Vistaprint recently. It looked like a good service to order custom coffee mugs, posters, thank you cards etc.

Note card

I had a bunch of data points to pick from and went with the statistics of life expectancy in specific countries including India. I realized we tend to ignore the big picture and hustle about the small stuff at work and at home. This statistic is a reminder of how far the world (specific countries in this case) has progressed in improving people’s lives.

Card front

Card back

I mapped these to note cards in Vistaprint. While the output looks fine on screen I’m eager to see how it translates to print in terms of text sharpness and overall card quality.

City roads

City roads is a beautiful project that highlights openstreemap road data for a given city. I thought it’s a perfect way to make a personalized gift out of it.

Below is a snapshot of Hyderabad city roads. I wrapped it on a coffee mug.

I’ll be testing out few other formats in the upcoming weeks to discover the best formats.

Update - 23rd Jan

The custom made coffee mug is here!

Coffee mug is sturdy, good quality. The print on the mug looks beautiful although I would have preferred a darker shade of the print.