I Really Like Stickers

Hi y’all! I’m Joy, and I really like stickers! This blog is dedicated to my ramblings about my sticker collection, and my thoughts in general about their importance and design.

[thatonestickerblog]

Hello!

My name is Joy, and welcome to my sticker blog!

This blog is really just a personal project, but I’m happy to share it here. Stickers have been an obsession of mine for a couple of years now, and though my collection continues to grow, I don’t have many spaces to openly share it. I figured this would be a great way to express all my thoughts about stickers, because I have a lot!

I’d like to post here (hopefully) about twice a week, taking y’all though my collection, providing context and personal opinions and things. I’ll be posting all kinds of stickers, ones from places and events I’ve been too, ones as branding or marketing items, as art pieces, and even stickers of my own design. From free stickers, too probably more expensive than they should have been stickers, from stickers that have almost no meaning, to stickers that mean the world to me, I can’t wait to share them with you all.

See you soon!

[thatonestickerblog]

Just got a new Rocket Fizz sticker! Let’s take a look and compare it to the last few years!!

This sticker is the newest in my Rocket Fizz collection! It is mostly silver and white with a red banner in the middle displaying the shop name. The sticker is cut In a circle, with the outline made to look like a bottle cap. A city scape dominates the lower half, also printed in silver.

Rocket Fizz, is, as the sticker says, a soda pop and candy shop. There are a few where I live in northern Colorado, and (mostly) every year they make a new sticker for the holidays. All of their stickers have been from a roll— mass printed on one long sheet of backing paper and are simply cut or torn off the roll. All of these stickers have been free, and the employees have been very sweet in letting me take a few rather than just one. As you will see, their holiday designs are fairly similar, with a few changes in the added design and color scheme for different years.

I know the blue color scheme sticker is from 2023, however the green I’m not as sure, but I know it’s at least post 2019. As you can tell, their designs are essentially the same as the newest, with variations in their ‘featured’ design at the bottom of the bottle cap.

I’m a little conflicted about this holiday collection. On one hand I kinda like the slight variations to the same design: it makes them like a set. Not necessarily cohesive, but the repeated design brings them together and solidifies the idea of the brand of the shop. On the other hand, as a designer, there is so much more potential to be had in making a new sticker every holiday season, and there are other ways to make designs unified without the same repeated design.

That all being said, I do appreciate the time and money it takes to do little things like this for the holiday season, and while it’s not something that many people would care to much about, I do love that the thought is there, and that Rocket Fizz is making the effort to bring a little bit more joy with a sticker.

[thatonestickerblog]

Now here’s an important sticker!

As an American, I have the right to vote for my government officials, and this sticker here brings people together in exercising that right.

It’s mostly intended as a wearable sticker, something to put on your person to indicate that you have voted— however in my own personal agenda of collecting stickers, if I am able, I like to save my stickers and not wear them, unfortunately defeating this specific purpose. Just another dilemma in keeping things that aren’t necessarily meant to be kept.

In this specific design, I appreciate the inclusion of Spanish. While I am not bilingual, and English is my first language, I have a few friends that learned Spanish as their first language, and the ability to vote in their native language makes the experience much more personal.

[thatonestickerblog]

Hello! Its been a while, but I’ve been reminded that this blog does in fact exist!

Life is running real fast right now, but through it all I’ve still been collecting stickers, and I’d like to finally try and share more with people. Updating this blog again might be a little spotty, but I’m going to try!

For just a quick intro post, here’s a look at the majority of my sticker collection! (Side note, if anyone has a good way to store stickers without peeling them please let me know, I’m realizing sticker bag is not the best option for me lol)

[thatonestickerblog]

Dutch Bros, June 2023

As we are over half way through the month, I wanted to take a look at the Dutch stickers that came out this month.

The first of the month sticker is a skeleton in a flamingo floatie, of course, drinking a red-ish iced Dutch drink. The 'Dutch Bros', as well as the '1992' seem to be hand drawn, with the bigger text being very wavy and distorted. 'Dutch' is filled in with a green half-tone texture, and 'Bros' is an inky black coming from the waves under the flamingo. This is a sticker that has an interesting origin story, because it was actually voted on a believe about a month or so ago, alongside a few other designs, all created by Dutch Bros employees. And honestly, this one was not my pick. It's a fun concept, and the hand drawn text is interesting, but the green halftone just doesn't mix very well with the rest of the design, and the separation of the year doesn't lend itself very well to readability. Obviously, people that know the company, or have at least seen a few other stickers, know that that's a year, (the year they were founded), but as a stand alone design, I just don't think it works. If this were the first sticker I had gotten from Dutch, I'm not sure I would be all that excited for the next ones.

Also in June, of course is Father's day, and as such, a sticker is required for celebration. And I will say, I am much more pleased with this one. Of course, the Father's Day sticker had to be a lawnmower, one of the more traditional dad symbols, but this one is much cooler, with hot-rod flames coming out the back, morphing into the text 'Dutch Dad'. The mower is blue and white, with the Dutch logo in black on the motor. I am always a sucker for texture, especially that of old screen printed T-shirts. Though I do like this sticker much more than the other, I'm not sure how to feel about the blank black space inside the handle of the mower, it feels a bit unused in a design that is so full of lines and texture everywhere else.

[thatonestickerblog]

Weldwerks pride sticker, June 2023

We're back with another Pride sticker! This one is from a local brewery, obviously called Weldwerks, and while I'm not much of a craft beer person, from what I understand, the place is very well known. This is a sticker that I would not have known about if not for my friends on social media, congratulating one of my previous classmates that designed it! Actually going down to the brewery and picking it up was a great experience, because the designer was working there at the time, and we got the chance to talk and catch up, and I was able to personally compliment them on the design. Knowing this person's style makes this sticker immediately more charming to me, because I can look at it and see a friend's work, their personality, and their skills in it.

Stickers are a fun part of branding-- they can be much more outgoing, casual, and playful. Especially here, this sticker gives Weldwerks the chance to show their support in a fun pride sticker, designed by a queer artist. The frogs are having a blast playing in the clouds and the rainbow waves, smiles on all of their faces. The colors work wonderfully, and the dark black outlines solidify the cartoony aspect. And knowing this person's style, the font is hand drawn. Also, despite being sold literally under the label of 'Pride stickers' at the brewery, this design is not entirely explicit, and it one that could probably be continued to be marketed as a simple summer fun sticker later on.

[thatonestickerblog]

Pride Stickers!

I have a few stickers to show for pride month, and I think I’ll separate them into 2 separate posts. For this first one, I want to show 4 stickers, 2 from my campus gender and sexuality resource center, one from planned parenthood, and one more ‘general’ rainbow heart sticker.

These campus gender and sexuality resource center (GSRC) stickers are from 2 different years, with the one on the left being the older one. I really like looking at the differences between the 2, noting the changes in the colors, especially in the blue stripe and on the bears nose, as well as the addition of the trans flag in the bears paws. The change in the text placement is also huge. In the left sticker, the text with the number and link are weirdly detached, they look almost like a disclaimer or a copyright stamp rather than support resources. The right sticker does a much better job of incorporating the text and the correct logo (the right has the lock up with a yellow line, placed on a yellow background, which is not the best choice), and communicates the information much better.

While this sticker is clearly a bit of branding, it does have another function in the form of help and support. Seeing this sticker around campus can inform people of the center, and allow them to reach out, or simply be aware that help and community is nearby. Stickers spread messages fairly easily, and can communicate a lot even without text.

While the Planned Parenthood sticker looks big here, I assure you, it is actually probably one of the smallest single stickers I own, with the large boarder making it about an inch and a half tall. It’s a pretty simple sticker, just a heart with a rainbow background and the PP logo in the middle, but for as small as it is, this sticker one that very easily has large impact. This is a sticker that someone might have to really think about where they place it, depending on where they are, or who might see it. While this is something that can be true for any pride sticker, I know that the addition of showing support for Planned Parenthood is another potential risk for some people. I think its size is something that recognizes this fact, and it is trying to make itself more accessible to place— easier to hide.

Planned Parenthood provides so many invaluable resources to so many people, I think it’s a shame it has to be hidden at all.

And the final pride sticker for this post, the simple yet effective heart shaped lgbtq+ rainbow flag. What I love most about this sticker is probably what the backing says about it. This sticker was more than likely on a roll, making it easier to have more stickers to transport and to give away. When I got this sticker, it was at a tabling event, and was already torn the way it is, so I’m assuming I’m missing out on it’s original context, but I would like to think that this sticker was given out at a much larger event, to many, many more people.

Happy Pride, and I’ll see y’all with another post soon!

[thatonestickerblog]

Dutch Bros, August 2020

I think the best sticker to start with is the Dutch Bros Coffee sticker from the August 2020 free sticker day. While this was not my first Dutch sticker, it is the oldest one I have in my collection-- the first ones I got, I placed on a laptop, because while I was in the collecting mindset, I hadn’t really developed my need to save them. I hadn’t known what Dutch was at the time, at first, and when I heard people talking about it, I assumed it was a restaurant. It wasn’t until a few weeks later that I learned that it was actually a drive through drink place, and about their first of the month free sticker promotion. 

My first semester in college was marked by all my friends squeezing into one car and driving 10 minutes down the road to get our drinks and our free stickers, every time there was one available. Of course, Covid ended up cutting our second semester short, creating a bit of a gap in my Dutch sticker collection, with this sticker being the start of my second year, when we were all allowed back on campus again. 

The main font seems to be Barro Plain, and as many of the earlier Dutch sticker designs are, it’s a simple shape, a rounded rectangle, with the focus being on the large type and a single decorative image. The slight overlay of the windmill and the H over the mountains helps to add just a bit of intrigue. It is medium in size, and in general one of my more average stickers, but of course, important to me anyways.