This is not a groundbreaking announcement for a college student. But this week I feel is going to be particularly helped along by my daily dose of caffeine.

As a designer, I would be remiss not to address the vessel that helps the coffee get from point A to point B: the coffee mug. I personally have a collection of coffee mugs, some that I like better than others. Some are also prettier and better designed than others. However, all serve their purpose.

I am also not the only person to ever address the styles of coffee mugs. My post is inspired in part from another post from the site Design Milk, which is devoted to everything design. The list shares some mugs designers from the group Society6 have made. (Also I feel like the last mug holds true for a lot of journalists). Here I will discuss some of my own favorite mugs. Also, please keep in mind I did not purchase any of these for their aesthetics in the first place so they are not in any way modern marvels of coffee mug design.

Left: Cardinals mug. Definitely beloved because it representative of my favorite hometown sports team. It is a clean white with logos strategically placed on either side of the mug. Very simple in design but also very effective.

Middle: The Owl mug. This one is doesn’t use any strong design principles per se, but in general is just cute. I do enjoy the colors and the shape and how this distinguishes it from many other coffee mugs. I probably also enjoy it because it is huge and delivers a lot of coffee per mug-ful.

Right: Sloth mug. If anyone knows things about me they know I like sloths. So the fact that this one features a sloth and is actually from Costa Rica makes it pretty cool. It does utilize design principles like the lines around the top and the bottom to give it a dynamic appearance.

Honorable mentions: I have several other mugs that don’t get the privilege of being pictured here today.

1. Vespa mug. A friend got me a mug from Italy that features a single red Vespa scooter as the only image. Similar to the Cardinals mug, its simplicity is what makes it effective.
2. Yellowstone mug. I got a mug from Yellowstone National Park when I was in sixth grade that has my name on it. On it are all the animals from the park and features of the park like Old Faithful. It also says Morgan across the top. It’s pretty busy but I like it for what it represents.
3. My Truman State University mug. I obviously don’t go to Truman State, but one of my best friends does and this was a present to me. It features the Truman State logo of a purple bulldog as it’s singular image. I like it because the logo is purple (my favorite color) and it is also very simple like my other logo mugs.

FYI I do have a Mizzou cup of course. I don’t include it here because it is actually a tumbler and doesn’t have a handle so I don’t truly consider it a mug. But that’s a different topic.

Lastly, I want to show a product I found last night while thinking about this blog post. I stumbled upon another Design Milk post about modern reading essentials. The post also addressed the need for a good coffee mug and featured Pantone mugs. For those not familiar, basically Pantone is a color system that allows designers to color match specific colors in a design. So when I found these sets of mugs I thought they were pretty cool. I particularly like this mixed blue set of Pantone mugs.

Design in mugs puts a log of emphasis on one single element. Whether that is a logo on a white background or just a single theme, like forming the mug into an owl, simplicity seems to be important. This is a little bit of a generalization because there are so many coffee mugs out there, but that’s the conclusion I have drawn from my small collection of mugs.

So those are my personal thoughts on coffee mugs. Do you have a favorite coffee mug or maybe one you’ve seen lately that you want? (Buzzfeed just posted a list about mugs as well: 26 Genius Mugs You Need To Drink Out Of Right Now”). Let me know your thoughts in the comments!