22 Gifts That Will Give You Serious Design Cred

‘Tis the season for babes in mangers, but Snoo ($1,160) is no manger. The futuristic bassinet contains sensors, microphones, speakers, and motors that respond to a baby’s cries with gentle rocking and a soothing shush. Harvey Karp, baby guru and author of the best-selling The Happiest Baby series, teamed up with Yves Béhar and engineers at MIT Media Lab to design it. His philosophy? Parents need more sleep, and young babies need more stimulation, akin to the environment in the womb. Snoo bestows both.

Morning coffee is a sacred ritual, which means it deserves more than a Keurig cup and a chipped mug. The design duo from Florida studio Yield Design crafted this six cup french press ($85) out of heat resistant borosilicate glass. It comes in clear and gray, but we love the warm glow of the amber. The solid brass pull gives the pot (and your morning routine) an extra touch of luxury---just what you deserve for your 6 am wake up call.

Patagonia wants its devotees to gift sustainably. Or not at all. Remember Black Friday, 2011, when the outerwear company took out the “Don’t buy this jacket” ad in the Times, telling consumers not to consume? The Re\\\collection is less confusing. The 10-piece line of jackets, vests, and pants (from $99) sports 100 percent reused down, wool, and polyester. The labels, zippers, and buttons contain between 50 and 80 percent reclaimed material. “Ideally, soon, all of our fabrics would be recycled,” says Miles Johnson, Patagonia’s creative director of product design.

Apartamento calls itself an everyday life interiors magazine, but its contents are hardly quotidian. The bookish magazine favors the eccentric, lived-in homes of cult artists over polished and sleek celebrity abodes. *Apartamento Cookbook #1: Cakes and Desserts *($27), the Barcelona-based publication’s first foray into food, features similar quirk. Simple line drawings accompany recipes from 16 chefs, for sweet dishes like gingerbread pudding, brown-butter cakes, and a traditional Stollen, from Martha Stewart.

A few years back, London designer Ric Bell set a goal for himself: to build a 12-sided, three-dimensional calendar. This year he did just that, and next year, you can track the passing days of 2017 on the DodeCal ($100). The calendar---shaped like a dodecahedron, made from sycamore wood---displays each month on a flat-faced rhombus. To get the geometry right, Bell recruited help from a bespoke furniture maker and a second-generation toy maker. Together, they CNC-milled a rather lovely stocking stuffer.

You wouldn’t buy a Kodak Ektra for yourself---the “photography-first smartphone” is like two separate halves of devices you probably already own. That’s why you gift it: so your photo-hungry friend---or your always-on-vacation friend, or your always-runs-out-of-phone-storage friend---can revel in the excessiveness of the Ektra ($565). Plus, the retro-looking device is sold alongside a few handsome leather cases ($37-$75), making the camera-smartphone an accessory in its own right.

Remember those glow-in-the-dark star stickers, from when you were a kid? This wallpaper is like the luxe, adult version. To create it, Rachel and Nick Cope---together, they make up Calico Wallpaper---took photos from NASA’s library of satellite images, blew them up, and transposed them onto yards of paper. The result is a slightly abstracted celestial topography, painted in Silver Mylar. ($32 per square foot.)

Blue Crow Media is a tiny publisher in London that makes architecturally specific city maps. Modern Berlin, a guide to the wide-ranging building styles from the city's 20th century, is its latest offering. Older maps include Art Deco tours of London and a list of must-see Brutalist sites in Washington, DC. Architecture buffs and neophytes alike will agree: At $10 a tour, Blue Crow Media makes a good case for reviving analog maps.

Redesigning an icon is risky business, but this year Herman Miller did just that. Twenty-two years after debuting the paradigm-changing Aeron chair, the Michigan furniture company rolled out---literally---a refreshed version ($780) of its famous task chair. The new Aeron chair comes with updated ergonomics, like a tilt function that makes it more responsive to your movements. And what’s a better gift for your loved ones than improved lumbar support?

We’ve all been there: You scald your tongue on your morning coffee, only to find, 20 minutes later, that it’s gone cold. The Ember mug ($150) fixes that, by quickly cooling your boiling coffee to your preferred temperature---anywhere from 120 to 145 degrees---and then keeping it steadily hot for four hours. This happens via a microprocessor and sensors that track the liquid’s temperature, activating a passive cooling and active heating system hidden in Ember’s walls. It’s a clever solution---one that Starbucks liked enough to start selling.

For the friend who organizes her phone’s apps by color, or the relative who color codes his bookshelves, here are rainbow-hued playing cards ($13) from Fredericks & Mae. The Brooklyn design duo has been creating colorful game sets for years---think bocce ball kits, dartboards, and notecards that morph into paper animal masks---and the playing cards are their most practical offering yet.

Richard Brendon’s gilded teacups solve a very specific, very British problem: They give new life to abandoned antique saucers. Perhaps because they’re handled more frequently, teacups break more often than their saucer counterparts. Those tiny, lavishly decorated dishes end up at secondhand sales (the island of misfit tableware), where they go forgotten. Brendon’s gold teacups reflect their patterns, creating the illusion of a reunited set ($100 and up).

Winter, with its gusts of icy air and uncontrollable radiator heat, is harsh on skin. These serums, from WIRED favorite Glossier, offer a layer of protection. Serums are like vitamin infusions, but they go on your face, not in a juice. Glossier infused its Supers ($65 for all three) with nutrients like hyaluronic acid and vitamin B5 (found in Super Bounce) and Niacinamide and Zinc (found in Super Pure.) A few drops a day from one of these pastel bottles should keep your loved one's mug healthy until spring.

Two MIT engineering graduates designed this pen, and it shows in the details. The pen, named, no kidding, The Pen ($99), looks like a bullet and has a nib retraction mechanism that swivels endlessly in 360 degrees. The Pen also comes with a refillable ink cartridge, so discriminating writers can restock with one of 35 inks of their choosing.

There’s nothing like a little typographic wordplay to show the world just how into graphic design you are. Pentagram’s Britt Cobb printed these black cotton totes ($30) with a bright white Helvetica Neue, set ultra-tight. Get the joke? Congrats, you’re a bonafide design nerd. But even if you don’t, you’ll still look cool carrying it.

Outdoor Voices, maker of color-blocked, tri-tone workout leggings and crop tops, started making yoga blocks this year. A Parsons School of Design graduate founded Outdoor Voices, so, no surprises here: the Shapes Bundle ($50 each) looks more like end table art than like squishy foam gym equipment. New York studio Visibility designed the three-piece set out of cork, and carefully tested the shape and feel of the blocks with the entire Outdoor Voices staff, plus a team of yogis in New York.

If your shower curtain’s an afterthought, think again. The blue of this geometric curtain ($198) is meant to evoke the open prairie skies of its namesake, Marfa, while the quilted shapes are inspired by Donald Judd’s minimalism. Attach the brass grommets to your shower’s overhead pole, and it’ll be like showering in a Josef Albers color study.

Dyson made its first foray into beauty products this year, with the Supersonic hairdryer. Like Dyson’s supercharged vacuums, fans, and hand dryers, the Supersonic comes packed with tech like the Air Multiplier feature, a digital motor, and heat sensors. It’s designed to regulate heat, so hair doesn’t fry, and minimize turbulent airflow, so strands don’t tangle. Sleek, geometric, and compact, this thing looks like a Dyson. It also has a price tag like a Dyson, at $400. But your loved one---and her tresses---will thank you.

No one needs a printed travel guide---there’s apps for that---but if they happen to be as handsome as these booklets, you’re probably going to want one anyway. Studio NODE Berlin Oslo designed these 17 guides ($90 for the set) to look like indie magazines that just happen to be filled with killer recommendations on where to go and what to see from local creatives. Toting a book around might not be practical, but when they look this nice, it’s worth the extra suitcase space.

This turntable is more than a means to your acoustic ends. Built in Detroit from sturdy materials (think aluminum, wood, and steel), Shinola’s first audio product is designed to look as good as it sounds. The simple turntable plays records back at both 33 ⅓ and 45 RPM; connect it to speakers via a RCA cable to get that golden sound. At $2,500 it’s not as cheap as the dusty player sitting in your uncle’s basement, but it is a helluva lot prettier.