On the Thursday before someone’s last day, a card goes round the office and comes back with a page of signatures, and whoever is holding it has to turn that collection into a present. Farewell gifts are a strange brief: you know the person well enough to share a kitchen with them, not well enough to know what is already hanging in their hallway.
This post is about one kind of present, a framed view of a place. It could be the city, beach or ski field they are leaving, or the one they are heading towards. Here is what makes a gift like that work, how to pick the place, how a team buys a single thing together, the difference between the Poster and Painted editions, framed versus unframed for someone with a suitcase to fill, and a few other options if a print is not right.
The short version
- The move sets the brief: if it has to fit in a suitcase, favour something light that packs flat.
- The place should mean something to them, whether that is where they are leaving or where they are heading.
- One collection from the whole team, with a single card everyone signs, reads better than a scatter of small gifts.
- When their living room is a mystery to you, keep the scale moderate and the surround simple.
- The Poster edition suits a modern room; the Painted edition suits a quieter one.
- Say why that place was chosen in the card, even if it is only one line.
What makes farewell gifts worth keeping
A present has to survive the move. Anything bulky, fragile or too wide for a car boot tends to be handed on quietly a few months later, so the pieces that last are the ones that travel flat and light. A print does exactly that. Framed, it is a rectangle in a box. Unframed, it is light and packs flat.
The second test is whether the gift is about them. A view they walked past every morning ties the present to a place rather than to the fact of leaving, and our guide to art gifts for the wall covers more of the range if you want to compare formats before you decide. Then add the small piece: a note saying why that place was chosen. Without it you have given someone a nice picture. With it, you have given them something to hang where they are going.
Choosing the place they are leaving, or the one they are heading towards
Hang the city, beach or view they are about to leave on a new wall and it stays with them. A picture of the town they are moving to does the other job: it greets them before the furniture arrives. Either way, a landmark or a stretch of sand they would name in a second carries more than a general view of a coastline.
Our Range & Reef collection covers Australian beaches, cities, islands, coast and the snow.
- Cities: Sydney Harbour, with the Harbour Bridge and the ferries crossing, Melbourne with Flinders Street Station and a tram, and Brisbane with the Story Bridge over the river.
- Beaches: Bondi and the ocean pool at the south end, Manly with its pines and the ferry, Cottesloe with the groyne and the Norfolk Island pines, Noosa Heads with Main Beach and the headland, and St Kilda with the pier and the bay.
- Islands and coast: Rottnest Island with a quokka and the lighthouse, Whitehaven Beach and the sand swirls at Hill Inlet, Wineglass Bay from the lookout, and the Twelve Apostles off the Great Ocean Road.
- The snow: Thredbo, Mount Buller, Perisher, Falls Creek and Mount Hotham, each a winter scene that takes its name from the place.
A name does more work than a map. The map is a fact. The bay is a morning somebody remembers.
A farewell gift for a colleague you have only known at work
Team collections go wrong in a familiar way: the money is split across several small things, and the person leaves with a bag nobody really chose. A single present from everyone, with one card the whole team signs, reads as a decision rather than an afterthought. That card does half the work, because it carries the handwriting.
Then comes the awkward part. You have seen this person across a meeting room for years and never once seen their living room, so scale is a guess. The A3 framed print that each Range & Reef page opens on answers that: a modest size for a wall you have never seen. It also turns up ready to hang, which helps someone whose next month is made of boxes. Add a line about the view itself, the walk to the station or the swim before work, and it stops being a scene of a city and starts being theirs.
Two editions of the same place: Poster and Painted
The Poster edition borrows from the travel posters of the mid-century: unshaded blocks of colour, the place name in large type across the top of the picture and its state beneath it. Bold and graphic, it holds a modern room without competing with it, and it looks deliberate on a plain wall or at the end of a narrow hallway.
The Painted edition softens the same scene. Colour is softer and blended rather than flat, an even cream border surrounds the image, and under the picture, centred in that cream border, the place name appears in italic serif with the state in spaced capitals beneath it. It settles into a calmer room, over a timber sideboard rather than on a bright feature wall. Neither of them is a painting. Both are printed designs, drawn up in-house by our Melbourne studio with digital tools and printed in Australia, and nothing in the range is painted by hand.
Framed or unframed for someone who is moving away
A framed print is the easier thing to receive. You get a thin 20 mm frame in oak look, black or white, and the front is perspex rather than glass, so nothing shatters in a removal van and there is no assembly at the other end. Perspex also keeps the weight down, which matters when a large piece has to be lifted onto a hook. Our framed wall art collection has more on the oak look, black and white finishes if you cannot picture them from a description.
The other route is the loose sheet: a giclée on 200gsm archival matte paper, light to carry and flat to pack, wrapped in tissue paper and sent in cardboard packaging. That suits someone moving away before they have seen their new walls, because they can choose the frame once they are standing in the room. Sizes in our art print collection run from A4 up to 70 x 100 cm, and each piece lists only the shapes its picture can fill, so check that list rather than assuming.
Other going away gift ideas for the trip and the new home
If a print is the wrong shape for the person, or the team wants something to sit alongside it, these are the going away gift ideas worth weighing up.
- A card, or a notebook of messages, filled with the whole team’s handwriting.
- A framed photo of the team, taken somewhere they would recognise.
- Something for the trip itself, if there is a long flight or a road move ahead.
- A gift for the new home rather than the old one.
- A print of the city they are moving to, as a greeting rather than a goodbye.
For someone flying out of the country, buy before the farewell. Range & Reef is sold on the Australian site only, so order the piece before they leave, and our Australian wall art collection gathers those pieces on one page. If the move is across town instead of across the world, our housewarming gift ideas post picks up the new flat. Either way the present is not really about leaving. It is about what they get to keep.
Frequently asked questions
What is a good farewell gift for a colleague?
One present from everyone works better than several small ones, and a picture of a location they know is easy to get right when their home is a mystery to you. The A3 framed print that each Range & Reef page opens on is a modest size that suits a wall you have never seen, and it arrives ready to hang. Put a card with it that the whole team signs, and add one line about why that place was picked.
How does a team put together one farewell gift?
Collect the money first, then make one decision instead of five. Agree on the piece, then on the location and the format, and place a single order. A card the whole team signs travels with it, and that card often gets kept longer than the gift. Give one person the job of holding the order details, so what arrives matches what everyone agreed on.
What can I give someone who is moving overseas?
Choose something light that packs flat. A loose sheet travels inside a suitcase, while a framed piece is heavier but goes straight onto a hook once it is unwrapped. If you want them to carry a piece of Australia with them, order it before they go, because Range & Reef is sold on the Australian site only.
Should a farewell print be framed or unframed?
Framed if they already have a home to put it in, because the piece arrives with the frame on and a hook is all it needs. Unframed if the walls are still unknown, since a sheet is lighter to pack and they can pick a frame once they see the room. The move usually settles this before taste gets a say.
What is Range & Reef?
It is the studio range of ours that covers Australian locations, from city streets and surf beaches to islands, coastline and ski fields. Each place appears in a Poster edition and a Painted edition, designed in-house by our Melbourne studio with digital tools and printed in Australia. No resort, council or tourism body is involved in it, and every picture is titled after its location rather than after a business.
What is the difference between the Poster and Painted editions?
The Poster edition is the graphic one: blocks of unshaded colour, the place name in large type across the top of the picture and the state beneath it. The Painted edition is the softer of the two, with colour blended rather than flat, an even cream border, and the caption centred in that border: the place name in italic serif and the state in spaced capitals. Neither is a painting. Both are printed designs, and the room they will hang in usually decides between them.
