Christmas Gifts for Dad

The reason dad gifts are hard

Men who want things buy them. That is why the standard dad presents are consumables — beer, socks, a novelty mug that will be quietly retired by March. The gifts that survive are the ones that record something he did, because he would never buy that for himself and cannot replace it if he loses it.

Four that work

• A route map of a race, a ride or a walk that meant something — printed with the distance and the date.
• Sound wave art: the actual waveform of a song, printed as a graphic.
• A star map of a birth, a wedding or the night he met her, drawn as the sky looked from those coordinates.
• A framed photograph of him with the people, the dog or the car he does not talk about enough.

Get the details exactly right

These prints are made of facts, and a wrong fact is the only way to ruin one. Check the date, the spelling of place names, and the distance units he actually uses — a runner who talks in kilometers will notice miles immediately. If you are printing a route, check the activity is the right one; most people have several that look similar on a map.

Where it will hang

Dad gifts usually end up somewhere functional rather than decorative: an office, a home gym, a garage, a landing. Those rooms have worse light and more clutter than a living room, so go plain and go slightly bigger. 16" x 20" is the size that still reads across a garage; 12" x 16" is right above a desk.

Ordering

Printed and framed to order by hand. Order by early December; the banner at the top of the page calculates the live last-order date for your country.

For the framing side of it, see Christmas photo frames .