Hattie Stewart stickers

 Hattie Stewart

A key figure in contemporary sticker design is illustrator and designer Hattie Stewart; her work is often full of playful and exciting colours that are incredibly nostalgic, using cartoonish illustration styles and bubble typefaces. What I love about her work is how it celebrates traditional sticker designs, yet with a personal illustrative style that adds more of a contemporary feel. I would like to explore this with my publication through adding my own style to the sticker concepts; this would help make the final outcome feel more unique, but still referencing traditional elements of sticker designs. 

Hattie Stewart has also created a sticker book herself, with a multitude of her own illustrations (I even have one on my own laptop). I really love how she sticks to specific colour palettes for each sticker sheet, as it provides a sense of consistency. Stewarts' work also feels very feminine; the soft colours juxtapose the actual illustrations, which creates quite an interesting visual outcome. I could also try and introduce this into my own publication by using feminine and childish colour palettes with serious messages. 

Initial feedback notes

 Initial peer feedback

Bubblegum movie cards

 Vintage movie bubblegum 

I found these amazing bubblegum pack designs within my research, and found the concept really interesting; they are all inspired by 70's Hollywood blockbusters and come with stickers and movie cards. I found this interesting as I also love film and movie poster visuals, which would be cool for me to explore in my publication; I could always play around with a movie poster layout, but with certain areas cut out and turned into stickers. I also really love the bright and exciting colour palettes found in 70's movie poster design, so could possibly make a posterzine to celebrate this; I want to ensure that the publication celebrates this in some way, and focuses on the interactive nature of stickers and publications. 

Testing out illustration styles - fruit stickers

 First initial fruit stickers

Sketches

I wanted to play around with different illustration styles in order to explore the fun and wacky decorations of fruit stickers. The main thing I've noticed within my research is that a lot of fruit stickers have anthropomorphised fruit/ cartoons within their branding; these are a selection of my interpretation of this. I think its important to play with this illustration style as its such a massive part of fruit stickers and the culture surrounding them. 

An idea I had was to create some illustrations inspired by the knock-offs found in fruit stickers, such as things like Rolex stickers etc. These illustrations of parodies of cartoon characters combined with fruit; they celebrate the ridiculous decorations found in fruit stickers, through adding the fun illustrations found in cartoons such as Goofy and Spongebob.

I think my favourite sketches from these initial illustrations are the Goofy banana, Garfield melon and the Spongebob Pearpants; I feel like they have the best compositions and character. I want to test out different colour palettes as well to celebrate the wacky colours in fruit stickers; this will help me explore the playful nature of cartoons and the designs featured in fruit markets. 

Digital development

I wanted to play with editing the sticker designs further through adding colour; the hues I used were very much reminiscent of the classic fruit stickers found in market stalls, with slight faded colours and pastels. These worked quite well at adding a childish and fun sense of voice to the designs, which complimented the cartoonish illustration style. 

In order to add more of a genuine effect by adding a paper sticker texture to the designs; this was inspired by the stickers curated on the @fruitstickers page on instagram. This definitely helped develop more of a vintage effect, through replicating retro fruit stickers; I could always explore this further in creating stickers for my publication? As well as this, I think its also very important for me to try and replicate these stickers as effectively as possible due to COVID, as it may be difficult for me to actually print them physically. Due to this, I think I need to consider the materials I will be using for the actual physical publication, in order to inform and communicate ideas better. 

Initial ideas (notes)

 Initial ideas

Key words

• Collective 
• Nostalgic 
• Wacky 
• Political 
• Elaborate 
• Interactive 

Initial notes from briefing

 Notes

Iconic stickers - the Smiling Sun

 The Smiling Sun

https://www.itsnicethat.com/features/anne-lund-the-smiling-sun-graphic-design-internationalwomensday-080318

The Smiling Sun is one of the most influential sticker/ logo designs in the anti atomic power movement; it was created by accident by Danish woman, Anne Lund in 1975 for the OOA. Translating to 'atomic power? No thanks', the simple logo uses fun and gentle visuals to represent the ideologies of the group. The sticker was placed and worn on a multitude of things, such as clothing, cars, lamp posts and flags, and has been an iconic symbol ever since. 

The cheery colour combination used in the sticker reflects the positive attributes of the OOA organisation; this places emphasis on how positive imagery can often work to get a message across. The sticker embodied the non violent ideas behind the anti nuclear movement.“This logo symbolised the dangerous side of nuclear power but I wanted to show that there was a positive alternative in the form of renewable energy.”

Another reason for the non violent design of the Smiling Sun was that Anne considered the role of women within the movement; "it needed to be pretty enough for women to wear it on their overcoats to indicate a kind, but firm 'no thanks'. No clenched fists, no scary images".

I feel like I could definitely take a more political approach on my publication, as stickers do have a massive influence on spreading awareness of political movements, from anti nuclear to civil rights. I could also intertwine this concept of 'friendly' or 'non violent' visuals into the publication, by designing a series of fun and playful stickers. This would help provide an interesting composition between soft and cute imagery and strong political messages. 

Vote or Die - the new political bumper sticker?

 Vote or die - 'stickers are the new placards'

https://www.instagram.com/voteforclimateordie/

https://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/register-to-vote-misc-261119

I have already gone into depth about the politics behind bumper stickers, with people sharing their political standpoints on the bumpers of their cars - but is the bumper sticker being replaced? I found this article discussing new and emerging brands and studios that use stickers as a way to share political messages, yet not in the traditional bumper sticker format. With more and more young people putting stickers on things such as laptops and skateboards, it makes sense that political stickers are having a resurgence in a new and fun format. Students are becoming more involved in politics, so will want to express this through the stickers on their personal belongings. 

A key figure in this sticker movement is 'Vote or Die'; a project to promote voting to young people, through placing the importance of politics and democracy in a sticker format. The designs use fun and decorative illustrations to communicate ideas, which celebrate the more traditional sticker concepts. I think this idea of using fun visuals to communicate more serious subjects is very clever, and reminds me of the Smiling Sun design for the OOA; is it more effective to use playful design to convey serious subjects?

Chiquita banana stickers

 Chiquita collaboration with Richard Cavolo

https://www.itsnicethat.com/news/ricardo-cavolo-chiquita-logo-banana-stickers-illustration-021219

During my research, I came across the new sticker designs that banana brand Chiquita have created, which celebrate the origins of the fruit sticker; the new illustrations (created by Richard Cavolo), develop a fun twist on the original sticker, through featuring elaborate illustrations and wacky colours. What I love about this example is that the collaboration pays homage to the super maximalist sticker labels found in market stalls, by really focusing on what designers can do with such a small space like a fruit sticker. As well as this, I feel like the brand have also capitalised on how stickers are becoming more and more trendy for students; now more than ever, people want to personalise their personal items (such as laptops), by adorning them with fun and colourful stickers. It could be interesting to navigate through this theme of personalisation in my publication, as it is a key factor in the popularisation of stickers; fruit stickers not only serve as branding, but are used in a way of adding fun into our everyday lives. 

Smokey Bear stamps

 Smokey Bear stamps

 Smokey Bear was a character created by Harry L. Rossoll in order to spread awareness about wildfires to children. His character has been printed on a multitude of items, including stickers and stamps; I really love the light hearted nature of these illustrations, as it showcases how cartoons and stickers can discuss important issues from politics to fire safety. 

I think the main interesting thing about these stamps is how they have a very collective identity to them; each stamp shows a different image and message, which kind of works as a way of story telling. I could definitely take inspiration from this through communicating a story through my publication design, and celebrating the lighthearted and interactive nature of stickers. The main intention with the final outcome us to express the individuality that stickers provide, as well as translating the fun nature showcased in stamps such as Smokey Bear.

Dreaming Vinyl

 Dreaming Vinyl

https://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/jay-vaz-lawrie-miller-dreaming-vinyl-graphic-design-animation-090620

Dreaming Vinyl is a project founded by Jay Vaz and Lawrie Miller (representin' LAU). The project reinvents vinyl stickers by bringing them to life through animation. The key ethos behind the concept was to experiment with the design process of vinyl stickers, and how audiences in 2020 interact with music.

Dreaming vinyl celebrates the relationship between design and music through unique and playful looped animation that is foregrounded by music; it considers how motion design can further bring music to life, especially in a more ever growing digital world with the likes of Spotify introducing loops visuals with certain musicians work. With both Jay and Lawries' designs floating around the music industry, the duo wanted to experiment more with vinyl sleeve design “We found ourselves really enjoying experimenting with the vinyl sticker design process,” he says, “eventually leading to the idea of animating the vinyl stickers, which we hadn’t really seen done before.”

The aim of Dreaming Vinyl is to create a community for creatives and musicians, where people can discover new and emerging artists alike. Both founders have noticed 'the power of motion graphics', and how people consume things at a faster pace due to social media.

The animation of the vinyl stickers themselves are designed to capture the emotion of the sound rather than specifics; abstract imagery is 'manipulated in a way that makes the visual clear in relation to the sound'.

I definitely feel very inspired by how this approach to sticker design has been blended with a modern approach through being brought to life with animation; I could certainly experiment with this in my design process, through adding QR codes into the publication for users to scan and see the sticker designs move. 

F1 vintage racing decals/ stickers

 Vintage F1 racing decals/ stickers

During my research I came across these amazing F1 vintage stickers, and thought that they could inform my design approach massively in terms of what colours and illustration styles I could use; I think a key thing that I've found in these vintage stickers is that every sticker uses a unique typeface, which I need to consider for my publication. I could possibly create my own custom type inspired by retro stickers? This will allow me to really push my outcome to have more character, as I think that a pre existing typeface wouldn't do the publication justice in communicating the visuals in sticker design. 

Scratch n' sniff stickers

 Scratch n' sniff stickers

For the brief I also need to consider what materials and mediums I want to feature in order to communicate my ideas. The first thing that came to mind on the subject of stickers was scratch n sniff; I remember as a kid they were this magical thing, but never actually smelt nice. I found these examples above really funny as they're of such random scents - nachos?? It would be amazing if I could create my own scratch n sniff stickers as that could work really well for creating a super immersive user experience. However, it probably isn't likely, as well as not being very COVID friendly. Despite this, I can still take inspiration from the visuals in these sticker designs, as that in itself is still really interesting; I think a key component of this brief is that I use really vibrant colour palettes to communicate this element of nostalgia. 

Contemporary sticker design

 Vinyl sticker design

Illustration James

Illustration James is a designer that works closely with record labels such as Shall Not Fade, creating unique illustrations for vinyl stickers. Most of his work features custom typefaces and wacky illustrations in a cartoon style; his attention for detail for such a tiny sticker on a record really shows the importance of vinyl stickers, and how they tie the whole design to align with the music itself. What I like the most about James' work is how he works on such a small area, yet really brings what would be a flat vinyl to life; his work is very reminiscent of vintage record stickers, especially in the typefaces he uses. It could be interesting to play with this concept of record stickers, as I am into music quite a lot and could intertwine this interest into my publication.

Sauce Design

Sauce Design is another graphic designer that really works with attention to detail; every typeface he uses is custom, which allows his work to communicate the same overall themes and tones. These examples play with a sticker format, and are definitely inspired by the over the top and maximalist colour schemes found in 70s sticker design. I think Sauce Design is a perfect example of a designer that blends both nostalgic elements with the modern, as his typefaces create a more futuristic take on visuals. 

Anthropomorphic fruit - Lauren Martin

Lauren Martin is an absolute genius when it comes to personifying household items and food. Her work provides a very wholesome and playful tone, through bringing things like bananas to life; this is massively influenced by her love for fruit stickers, in which she has also designed. What I love about Martins work is that it also has a massive sense of nostalgia, with her illustration style seeming almost childish - like something you would create in primary school. The concept of personifying fruit is obviously not new, but Martin does it in a way that allows her to send messages (sometimes political) to her audience. This has kind of sparked an idea for my publication to have some sort of narrative? For example, I could develop a comic book inspired by fruit stickers, in which the audience add and take away stickers as they please. Also, I could try to make my publication more educational, such as recipes to tie in with the theme of food; this could allow me to even target the outcome towards children?

Tegos Gratos

Tegos Gratos is a designer that also blends themes of nostalgia with modernity, through featuring familiar cartoons with elaborate and modern typeface design. His work loosely ties into sticker design, but what I like most is this particular style of working with cartoons in a way that doesn't feel childish. Most of Tegos' work is used by record labels, particularly for techno and house, which gives this certain clean edge to his graphics. I could possibly take inspiration from this design approach through balancing retro with modern in my own sticker designs; this could help bridge familiarity with the audience, but also providing a new look.