employee christmas gift and award ideas

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Holiday season is fast approaching and there’s no better time for showing appreciation. As a time for giving and expressing thanks, it’s the perfect opportunity to reward employee dedication and outstanding commitment with a small token of gratitude.

But deciding on corporate gifts can be a minefield - magnified by the Christmas work rush and hitting deadlines before the break commences.

If you stumbled across this blog looking for Christmas awards or employee Christmas gift ideas, Watson Design has plenty of possibilities to help. Below, we breakdown our collections and offerings to simplify the process and help you make an informed decision. 

Custom
Trophies and awards that have been created for specific events and themes or to match corporate and organizational branding. If you’d like to reward recipients with something totally unique and original, this is the option for you. 

We encourage in-depth collaboration between our designers and clients, allowing a shared vision to be brought to life — creating beautiful and meaningful awards and corporate gifts that will show genuine appreciation and thanks this Christmas. 

With custom options available from under $200 per award to over $300, there’s plenty of flexibility in the materials we work with and the complexity of the finished product. 

Eco
The difficulty of searching for employee appreciation ideas at Christmas can be made harder if you’re seeking sustainable and eco-friendly options. We specialize in a sustainable approach to the custom design and creation of unique, handcrafted awards and plaques - a great choice for eco-conscious Christmas gifts. 

Considering the environmental impact of our processes, all of our eco awards are handcrafted from recovered or sustainable materials. In the eco range, we stock several pre-designed awards that are exclusive to us and can be customized for any brand or event. Alternatively, we can create custom awards from scratch using only eco-friendly materials.

Acrylic
Our pre-designed acrylic awards are again exclusive to us and 100% customizable to suit your branding or event theme using UV flatbed printing - a state of the art process that allows us to print photographic quality in full CMYK colour. 

Awards in this collection are beautifully crafted, affordable and - as we keep stock of our acrylics - they’re a great choice for time sensitive orders. We’ll bring your ideas to reality as quickly as possible to ensure you have them in time for the holiday season. 

Searching for employee appreciation ideas at Christmas doesn’t have to be a challenge. We’ve got you covered with our options on corporate gifts, awards and trophies. Check out our homepage to explore our offerings further and delve into a wide array of employee Christmas gift ideas. 

the art of creating unique awards: custom design for lacework

How do you create a unique award?

Recognition and reward is a special act that provides a sense of value between those rewarding and those being rewarded. When recognizing someone with an award, that sense of value can be enhanced if it is truly unique. But, there is an art to crafting awards that are beautifully striking, and distinct from traditional trophies and plaques.

To be unique is to be unlike anything else. When creating awards, this means developing new, exciting concepts and using different materials creatively to produce an individual, modern trophy design.

Working with Lacework, we developed a custom shape before incorporating an interesting mixed material approach to bring the design to life — including our inaugural use of a special holographic film.

An elegantly shaped piece of clear acrylic with an alluring chamfered edge makes up the main body. Finished with diamond polishing, we added the holographic film to the rear to create a dazzling, multi-colored effect and the perception of stained glass. The magical colors reflect the Lacework brand and ensure that the awards vibrantly stand out. 

Contrasting the vivid material on top, smoky charcoal colored cast concrete with a rough natural finish provides a solid base down below. Combining such different materials helps to achieve a finished product that is both contemporary and independent, while the varying colors and textures complement each other beautifully.

Laser engraving to the concrete and UV prints to the acrylic augments the custom element to these awards and meets Lacework’s branding requirements with the addition of their logo and name.

The outcome is a unique award, designed to reward and recognize — and provide a sense of value towards Lacework employees.

custom awards for nutaku

Nutaku custom awards for outstanding achievements

Watson Design was tasked with crafting custom awards for Nutaku to celebrate outstanding achievements within their company and recognize employee success. Nutaku commissioned Watson Design to create high-quality, custom trophies that reflected their brand and remained completely bespoke. 

The awards were assembled using aluminum tubes with anodized aluminum. These materials combined with the print and design of the awards worked in unison to deliver a harmonized design. The angular lines of the award are echoed in the subtle geometric gloss print that wraps around, inviting the viewer to inspect each side. This adds depth and captures light in a playful manner as it bounces from one line to another. Working with aluminum tubing was not simple and required meticulous work to sand, finish and cap each end before assembling without any visible fixings. Each award was custom made following Nutaku’s style guide and personalized with different numbers, categories and names. 

In order to create an exquisite employee appreciation gift - in line with Nutaku’s corporate identity - Watson Design employed a variety of machinery and range of printing techniques including wide format flatbed, screen printing and sublimation. Watson Design specialize in the custom design and creation of unique hand-crafted awards.