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).