Custom Brother Gifts That Will Not End Up In A Drawer

Ask a brother what he wants and the answer is either nothing or something that costs four hundred dollars. Socks and a bottle are the safe fallback, which is why every brother owns too many of both.

The gifts that work for brothers are rarely sentimental on the surface. They are a joke with a real feeling underneath, the kind of thing you hand over with a straight face while the rest of the room laughs.

A photograph does either job depending on which one you pick. The terrible school photo is the joke. The picture of the two of you at your grandad's eightieth is the feeling. You can put one on each side and let him decide which way round it lives.

If you are shopping for a husband or a dad as well, gift ideas for the other men in your life works through the same problem more broadly.

The old team photo

The under elevens football squad, the school rugby team, the five a side lot from his twenties. Men who would never display a family photo will happily keep a team one on the sofa.

His dog, the actual love of his life

For a brother who sends more photos of the dog than of anything else, a cushion cut to the dog's outline is the obvious move. There is a whole guide to presents for people whose dog is the main character.

The two of you, decades apart

A childhood photo of the two of you on one side, a recent one on the other. The contrast says everything without either of you having to.

His whole body, for the committed joke

For the brother who has earned it, a 150 cm pillow printed with his entire body is the gift that will be brought up at every family gathering for the next decade.

His children, from the aunt or uncle

Once he is a dad, the best photo you can give him is usually of his own kids, ideally one he has not seen because you took it.

• School photos, which are often still framed somewhere in your parents' house. Take them out of the frame and photograph them flat to avoid glare from the glass.
• The family group chat holds years of usable pictures. The siblings chat, if you have one, holds the worst ones, which may be exactly what you want.
• His partner, who is the most reliable source of a recent good photo and a useful ally in keeping the whole thing secret.
• Sports clubs, which often post match photos online. Ask the club for the original file rather than saving the image from the post.

Whatever you find, the free preview shows it at full printed size before you pay. That matters most for the face version, where a blurry photo gets more obvious the bigger it is.

• His birthday, particularly a round number, when the joke needs to be big.
• His wedding, either from the siblings with a childhood photo of all of you, or as a present for the newly married pair with the two of them on the front.
• When he becomes a dad. A photo of him holding the baby, given on his very first Father's Day, tends to get a quieter reaction than anything else on this page.
• Christmas, as the sibling secret Santa that everybody else wishes they had thought of.
• A move away for work, when a reminder of home is useful and a framed photo would be faintly embarrassing.

With a brother, the reveal is a large part of the gift. A cushion of his own face opened alone in his flat is mildly funny. The same cushion opened at the table in front of the whole family is a story people tell for years.

• Disguise the shape. Put it in a box rather than wrapping it directly, so he cannot guess it is a cushion until the last second.
• Pick your moment. Birthday dinners and Christmas mornings work best, because there is an audience and nobody can escape.
• Have somebody film it. His face when he realises whose face it is tends to be better than the gift.
• Hide the real one on the back. Put a photo of the two of you as kids on the reverse and do not mention it. He will find it later, usually when the laughing has stopped.

For the card, keep it as dry as the gift. Thought you deserved to see yourself the way we see you does the job.

• 60 cm for the face version. The joke needs scale.
• 40 cm for a normal photo on a normal sofa.
• 20 cm for his car, his desk or a shelf at work, where a big one would be a step too far.
• The back is printed free, so the joke and the real photo can share one cushion.

It ships straight to him with a note, or to you so you can be in the room when he opens it, which is honestly half the point. The print is dyed into the fabric, so it survives being thrown around, sat on and washed.

The joke version only works if it is the right kind of joke. A few photos are worth skipping, however tempting.

• Anything from a stag do, a festival or a big night out. It might be hilarious to you, but it will end up on a sofa where his partner's parents sit.
• Photos with an ex in them. Crop completely or pick another picture.
• Jokes that need explaining. If the photo only makes sense with a story, it will not survive the first visitor asking about it.
• Something he is genuinely sensitive about. There is a difference between the bad haircut he laughs about and the year he would rather forget. Siblings usually know which is which.
• A face that is too small. The face version needs a photo where his head fills a good part of the frame. A full length shot from across the room will look blurry when blown up to 60 cm.
• A photo his partner would not choose. If he lives with somebody, the cushion is going into a shared home. Teasing him is fine. Making the household look bad is not. A quick message to his partner settles it, and often turns up a better photo than the one you had.

Do not undersize the joke either. A face cushion at 20 cm looks like a keyring that went wrong. If you are doing the face, commit to 60 cm, and save the smaller sizes for the sentimental photos that are meant to sit on a desk or a shelf.

The best joke cushions are the ones he ends up quietly proud of. Aim for embarrassing in a way he can live with, and he will keep it for years.

The rest of the family, and the occasions brothers tend to get bought for.

• Sister gifts, built on the same shared photo archive
• birthday gifts with a photograph on them, for the round numbers
• gifts from the whole family, when everybody is putting in
• Christmas photo gifts, for the sibling secret Santa