Anniversary gifts for your boyfriend

Used up, or kept

Almost every gift for a man falls into one of two piles. The first gets consumed: whisky, aftershave, a gadget that is superseded in eighteen months, socks. The second gets kept: something with information on it that rewards a second look.

Neither pile is wrong. But if you want the gift to still be in the flat in five years, you are choosing from the second one, and most gift guides only stock the first.

One thing to clear up before the list. If you are not married, this is not the paper anniversary. That tradition belongs to wedding anniversaries. You are marking the day you got together, which carries no assigned material, so nothing below is chosen because it is made of paper.

Ten that get kept

1. A map of your relationship

The places your two years happened, drawn as one road in order: the flat, the pub, the festival, the airport, the dog. Men who claim not to want things on the wall tend to make an exception for something that has facts on it. It is the piece the shop is most often asked for by girlfriends buying for boyfriends.

2. A drawing of the specific object he loves

His car, his bike, his guitar, the boat, the bass amp. Drawn rather than photographed. Photographs of objects look like listings; drawings look like attention.

3. Tickets, with the second half attached

The match, the gig, the race. The ticket is the object; the day out is the gift. It turns an anniversary into two occasions.

4. The route of a walk or ride you did together

The coast path, the ride you both complained about, the night you got the last train. Printed as a line with the date on it.

5. A first edition of the book he quotes

Provenance rather than price, and usually cheaper than people assume.

6. The badge, shirt or programme from a match he went to as a kid

Findable, specific, and impossible to buy for anyone else.

7. A print of the building he works in, or used to

Oddly effective. People are sentimental about buildings they spent years in and never say so.

8. A letter about one day

Not a card, and not a summary of him. One page about a specific afternoon, written once. What you thought, what he did not notice.

9. A course or a membership, not a subscription box

Climbing, pottery, a darkroom, a league. Something with other people in it.

10. The thing he keeps almost buying

The one in the browser tabs. Watching what somebody nearly buys is the most reliable gift research there is.

If you pick the map

The brief is what decides how good it comes out, so a few facts worth having before you order.

It carries five to eight milestones, and eight is the ceiling rather than a goal. The composition is built around the sequence, so the order cannot change later and the choosing is the real work.

For an unmarried couple the useful stops are the early ones: where you met, the first date, the day it became official, the first trip, the first shared address, the pet, and often one thing that has not happened yet. In the delivered maps we studied, seventeen of twenty four ended on something still ahead of the couple rather than behind them.

You send written details, not photographs: the event, the real place name, the date, and one line on anything distinctive. Naming the place is what separates a good map from a generic one, because a named pub gets drawn as that pub.

The file is a 300 DPI PDF in a 2:3 ratio, so it prints at any 2:3 size. First draft within 3 days, print-ready files in 4 to 5 days, $49. You print and frame it, which matters more than it sounds if you rent: you can pick a size that suits the wall you actually have, and there is no shipping to time.

What to skip

Anything engraved with a quote. Engraving is permanent and quotes are not, and the sentiment ages faster than the object. If you want words on it, use your own, and use them about one specific day rather than about him in general.