Artwork is the new cupcakes!

by Rick Joi
Rick Joi is the founder of The Workiversary Group and author of the award‑winning book, Inspiring Work Anniversaries.

One of our popular posts is about cupcakes. 🧁

But cupcakes don’t work well at companies that work remotely, and we often get requests about remote work anniversaries. What is the digital equivalent? 🤔

Making food for others and eating together are deeply wired connection rituals that don’t have a simple replacement in the remote world. The closest analog (so to speak) is digital artwork. 🖼️

Are you an illustrator? A caricature artist? A comic artist? Do you do calligraphy? If you do any kind of artwork that lends itself to creating something personal for a work anniversary, it’s likely to be well received and shared across social media.

As with baking, even if you can do it, that doesn’t mean that you should, and generally all of the following need to be true:

You love creating the artwork
You’re on a small enough team that you can easily handle the time commitment
You’re organized enough to know ahead of time about upcoming work anniversaries and not miss any of them
Your life is stable enough that you can consistently put the time into creating work of similar quality for every work anniversary
You’re disciplined enough — and inspired enough — to have the artwork completed well ahead of the work anniversary so that if something unexpected comes up, the recipient will still get their gift on time

The great upside to this — in addition to making the other members of your team happy — is that your work will get more exposure.

The downside is that it’s hard to maintain the discipline to do it regularly and for everyone. If you do decide to go this route, I’d highly recommend that you make it clear that your commitment is only to do it for the next year so that everyone gets one. A different option is to be clear that you only do it for work anniversaries divisible by five, which will keep the workload much lower.

If that downside doesn’t worry you, we’re thrilled that you’re joining the movement to eliminate missed and mediocre work anniversaries! Welcome to the team! ✨

(Send us pictures of your creations if you get a chance — we’d love to see them and/or feature them in a gallery like the examples below! 💖)