Why I started making stickers

As software developer the business of stickers is not a wise choice. It is not as safe as a 9-to-5 job in some software house, it does not pay nearly as well, the margin are really thin and overall it is just a lot of work for not much money.

However, stickers have a property that make them appealing for me.

They create a sense of belonging to a community.

Visual effect

While software has the property of invisibility – you can’t really tell if a closed laptop belongs to a designer, a marketer or a developer – stickers are made to be as more visible as possible.

Having one sticker about, let’s say, Python, on your laptop says a lot about you.

It scream, in a language understandable only by few other like minded people, that you are a very logical person, that you think about your problems before to solve them, that you are able to manage abstract concepts and that you can bend to your will computers and make them do whatever you want.

It show that you belong to the community of developers and hackers.

Belonging

Making clear that you belong to a community will smooth a lot of iteration with peers.

Imagine to be at your favorite coffee shop quickly checking out the email while waiting for a friend, or working in some co-working space, or attending a conference and taking notes. Having stickers on your laptop will make you more approachable from fellow developers.

As human, we carve social iteration and having a simple excuses like “Whoa I really like that sticker about Git, do you use it at work? Are you also a developer?” may lead to very interesting iteration. From getting to know a new acquaintance in a different organization, or have a deeper conversation about typing system and turning a acquaintance into a friend or even open new business opportunities.

Belonging to a community will make the very first step simpler, then it will be up to you to exploit your network.

Devs Pride

Belonging to a community is not something to be proud by itself, there a lot of communities that I won’t be proud to join in; but being a developer is a completely different things.

We are the one making the human race do one of its biggest jump forward making the fourth industrial revolution.

With our work the world is moving as fast as ever and it is always more connected, we are more ready to face emergencies and we are making possible things that just few years ago were fantasies.

Visual aesthetes

Finally, as an engineers, we appreciate minimalism and pragmatism (aka “getting things done”) but we also appreciate good looking and personalized tools.

We spend a lot of times with our computers and having them personalized for our taste and personality makes everything more enjoyable.

Spend a lot of resource into making our stickers as beautiful as possible was a no-brainer for us.

Unique hexagonal stickers

I hope that you now understand the reason why I am devoting part of my time at making stickers.

Create a community, make that community feel proud of itself, smooth internal relationship while making good looking stickers is not simple but, as engineer, developer and hacker it really feels good.

If you would like to have your laptop scream that you belongs to our community you can buy our sticker here below or you can print them yourself (yes they are Open Source), though print them yourself is going to be a little more expensive.

For the curious I made only hexagonal stickers because hexagon are the only regular shape that can tile a plane, and they looks good :)