Sticking to my values.
The brief in brief
Ever since I started my first job as a design researcher, I’ve found myself envious of the stickers that seem to adorn the well beaten macbooks of my colleagues.
Adding stickers your laptop seems to be a right of passage. It always seemed to me that it would take a certain kind of confidence to display a message or an identity so prominently everyday. (Note: this is why I don’t commit to slogan t-shirts). It also seemed to be a bigger deal because I didn't know how these stickers seem to magically find their way into people’s hands.
Recently, I’ve been feeling a little bit of that confidence in the values I want to embody and the version of myself I want to work towards being. So, I felt like it was time I earned my stickers.
Or rather, it was time I embraced my inner child and made them.
The process
The concept behind my stickers revolved around the apple stickers I used to decorate (or vandalise depending on who you ask) my desk in my old art room at school. That was a space I felt comfortable, confident and creative. That was the feeling I wanted to tap into.
I spent time researching vintage fruit stickers and stumbled onto a huge range of visual inspiration. But the key to these stickers wasn’t the visual, but the message.
Referring back to my practice manifesto and some work I’d done through Meg Lewis’s Full Time You program, I quickly settled on two themes design research and introversion, in part because I didn’t think being an introverted user researcher was talked about enough.
The final product
I’ve been proudly sporting the printed stickers for the years now. They’ve sparked head turned reading and conversations about research, illustration and proudly being an introvert at work.
They also helped inspire a more visual representation of our workplace values, including in the form of stickers, which I’m working on now.
"Ooh where did you get those stickers?”
“I made them!”
— An everyday exchange