Sticker art

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A sticker by Smear photographed in Los Angeles in 2006 Smear Sticker.png
A sticker by Smear photographed in Los Angeles in 2006

Sticker art (also known as slaps in a graffiti context) [1] is a form of street art in which an image or message is publicly displayed using stickers. These stickers may promote a political agenda, comment on a policy or issue, or comprise a subcategory of graffiti. [2]

Contents

Sticker artists use various types of stickers, from eggshell stickers to free paper stickers, such as the United States Postal Service's Label 228 or name tags. [3] Part of their popularity in street art comes from being a faster, and therefore safer, option in illegal graffiti. [4]

History

Sticker art in Sydney. 2024 1636291.jpg
Sticker art 2024 - 2.jpg
Two variations on name tag stickers. Sydney, 2024

Name tag stickers that were printed with the text "Hello my name is" were first introduced by C-Line Products in 1959 and became widely used in both graffiti and sticker art. [5] The United States Postal Service's Label 228 sticker also became widely used in sticker art. [6] [7] [5]

In 1989 [8] Shepard Fairey created the sticker Andre the giant has a posse and it has been recognised as an early example of printed sticker art in the United States. [9] In 1996 [10] Fairey altered the image of André the Giant and changed the text to read OBEY and Fairey has commented that "I felt like the face had a lot of resonance already and that I should continue with the branding of the image and just transition it into something that had more of an Orwellian connotation...". [11] and since then this new image has been used in sticker art and become popular around the world for its ability to parody Orwellian propaganda. [11] [12] [13]

The first European sticker art project is that by Piermario Ciani, initially started in the 1980s within the Trax project and more intensely starting from 1991, [14] as also documented by a catalogue published in that year. [15] Solo One was one of the first graffiti artists to use stickers with tags on them in 1999. [16] Since 2000, many graffiti artists and street artists, like Katsu or Barry McGee incorporated stickers in their production, using them as an alternative to tagging and bombing, or as autonomous art projects. [17]

Sticker art that replicates a United States Postal Service's label 228. On the back of a street sign in Sydney. 2025 Sticker art in Sydney - 2025 - Label 228.jpg
Sticker art that replicates a United States Postal Service's label 228. On the back of a street sign in Sydney. 2025

Creation

The exterior facade of the coffeeshop "Green Place" entirely covered with stickers in Amsterdam. 2024 Coffeeshop Green Place facade covered with stickers in Amsterdam.jpg
The exterior façade of the coffeeshop "Green Place" entirely covered with stickers in Amsterdam. 2024

Sticker artists may hand-draw stickers, print them using a commercial printing service or at home with a computer printer and self-adhesive labels, or have them made commercially. [18]

Any kind of blank sticker can be used for sticker art. Both name tags [6] [7] [5] and Label 228s are often used with hand-drawn art, and are quite hard to remove, leaving a white, sticky residue. Eggshell stickers are also a popular type of sticker created specifically for street art. They are named because an attempt to remove them results in tiny pieces breaking off, like an eggshell. [19] Eggshell stickers are made of a mixture of paper and plastic which protects them from the elements. Eggshell stickers longevity allows sticker art to be a part of many urban landscapes. [20]

Exchange

Unlike other forms of graffiti which are created on public surfaces, stickers are portable before being "used" and many graffiti artists ("writers") trade stickers, and more popular artists sell their stickers. [21] Graffiti shops often have places for writers to exchange stickers, and global stores allow for worldwide sticker exchanges [22] [23] which lets artist have their work put up in places they may never visit themselves. [24]

Sticker art is sometimes a collectable item [25] with some collections having over 10,000 stickers. [26] Within graffiti culture, it is considered good manners for collectors to put up at least some of the stickers received in an exchange. [27]

Sticker art exchanges also allow large numbers of artists to collaborate on a single sticker, or multiple stuck together. [28]

Artists

Popular artists that use this medium of street art include Shepard Fairey, D*Face, and Ron English.

Artist Cristina Vanko refers to her "I am Coal" project as "smart vandalism." [29] Vanko uses stickers to identify objects that are coal-powered, spreading awareness of global climate change. [30] [31]

The artist Cindy Hinant created a series of projects from 2006 to 2009 that combined the tradition of sticker collecting [32] and sticker bombing in works that reflected on feminine representations in popular culture. [33] [34]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Brown, Michelle; Carrabine, Eamonn (2017-07-06). Routledge International Handbook of Visual Criminology. Taylor & Francis. ISBN   978-1-317-49754-7.
  2. ↑ Marecki, Piotr (2014). Stickers as a Literature - Distribution Platform. NYC: The Trope Tank. p. 2.
  3. ↑ Cooper, Martha (2009-03-28). Going Postal. New York; London: Mark Batty Publisher. ISBN   9780979966651.
  4. ↑ Elsner, Daniela; Helff, Sissy; Viebrock, Britta (2013). Films, Graphic Novels & Visuals: Developing Multiliteracies in Foreign Language Education : an Interdisciplinary Approach. LIT Verlag Münster. ISBN   978-3-643-90390-7.
  5. 1 2 3 Walde, Claudia (2007). Sticker City: paper graffiti art. Thames & Hudson. ISBN   9780500286685.
  6. 1 2 "Name Tagging: Martha Cooper". markbattypublisher. 10 July 2012. Archived from the original on 10 July 2012. Retrieved 27 February 2025.
  7. 1 2 Cooper, Martha (2009-03-28). Going Postal. New York; London: Mark Batty Publisher. ISBN   9780979966651.
  8. ↑ Kobi Annobil, Shepard Fairey, 'Format Magazine', January 21, 2008 "The Andre the Giant sticker was just a spontaneous, happy accident. I was teaching a friend how to make stencils in the summer of 1989, and I looked for a picture to use in the newspaper, and there just happened to be an ad for wrestling with André the Giant and I told him that he should make a stencil of it. He said 'Nah, I’m not making a stencil of that, that’s stupid!' but I thought it was funny so I made the stencil and I made a few stickers and the group of guys I was hanging out with always called each other The Posse, so it said Andre the Giant Has a Posse, and it was sort of appropriated from hip-hop slang – Public Enemy, N.W.A and Ice-T were all using the word."Archived 2022-01-18 at the Wayback Machine
  9. ↑ "Andre the Giant Has a Posse". 21 July 2015.
  10. 1 2 "Shepard Fairey". Juxtopoz.com. Juxtopoz. Retrieved 14 January 2026. [Evan Pricco]: That original face, that original icon. [Fairey]: It was January 1996 when I made that image. I made the star at the same time, the star icon. [Evan Pricco]: Well, how long did it take you to do the OBEY logo? [Fairey]: Well, the original Andre sticker took like 10 minutes, but the icon face… that took me a couple of nights of hanging out at Kinko's until the wee hours. Because first I illustrated it, the whole face, based on the two sides of the analog Andre face. And then I decided which half of the face was more appealing, simplified that, mirrored it, and then I cut it out. You know, I did this all without a computer. I cut it out of a window, out of a piece of paper, then I would scale the image up and down and leave the window the same size, and look at what cropping looked the best. These are all things that I can do very efficiently on the computer now, but it was all done by hand. [Evan Pricco]:Can you shout out the Kinkos where you made this? [Fairey]: Angel Street, Providence, Rhode Island.
  11. 1 2 3 "Bomb It - 2008 - Documentary". Youtube.com. Cool Films and Music. 2007. Retrieved 27 December 2025. I felt like the face had a lot of resonance already... and just transition it into something that had more of an Orwellian connotation...". [The] "Andre the Giant has a posse sticker started out as a fluke... ...I completely lucked out with that. You know if someone were to say 'Come up with an icon that you're gonna perpetuate for the next 15 years', definitely wouldn't have been that, but the more I put it out there the more of a reaction it got...
  12. ↑ Zara, Janelle (14 November 2017). "Interview:Shepard Fairey". theguardian.com. The Guardian. Retrieved 14 January 2026. Having begun his career as a teenager clandestinely pasting posters on the sides of buildings in the middle of the night in cities like New York and Providence, and eventually all over the world...
  13. 1 2 "Shepard Fairey". theartstory.org. the art story. Retrieved 14 January 2026. As Banksy noted, '...I am absolutely positive he [Shepard Fairey] has made more reaches [street art interventions] than any graffiti writer in history ever has done or ever will.'... ...Fairey posted the Obey Giant image in cities across the world in a move that he thought "democratized art". He wanted to make art accessible and show that there was room in the public space for more than advertising and government signage. As Art writer Alex Rayner notes: "What sets Fairey apart... is the scale of his Giant campaign. The Andre image predates most other street-poster graffiti artists and Giant heads have been plastered up in Japan, Russia, Italy and Paris, as well as numerous sites throughout the UK and the US.
  14. ↑ https://archive.org/details/mart-archivio-del-900?tab=collection&query=piermario+ciani+sticker+1991
  15. ↑ "P. Ciani, Free stickers catalogue, 1991". 1991.
  16. ↑ Ferrell, Jeff; Hayward, Keith; Morrison, Wayne; Presdee, Mike (2016-04-15). Cultural Criminology Unleashed. Routledge. ISBN   978-1-135-30984-8.
  17. ↑ "Exploring pop culture's subversive sticker art culture". 26 August 2015.
  18. ↑ Brown, Michelle; Carrabine, Eamonn (2017-07-06). Routledge International Handbook of Visual Criminology. Taylor & Francis. ISBN   978-1-317-49754-7.
  19. ↑ Viljoen, V.A.; Spocter, M. (2021-10-08). "An exploratory foray into visual street art and graffiti in south African cityscapes". Proceedings of the Biennial Conference of the Society of South African Geographers and the Southern African Association of Geomorphologists– via ResearchGate.
  20. ↑ Shobe, Hunter (2020), Brunn, Stanley D.; Kehrein, Roland (eds.), "Graffiti as Communication and Language" , Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 3155–3172, doi:10.1007/978-3-030-02438-3_81, ISBN   978-3-030-02438-3 , retrieved 2023-08-29{{citation}}: CS1 maint: work parameter with ISBN (link)
  21. ↑ "Graffiti Stickers Used For Good At UGLY Gallery". www.wbur.org. 10 June 2013. Retrieved 2023-08-29.
  22. ↑ "Sticker Exchange". www.streetfame.net. Retrieved 2023-08-29.
  23. ↑ "Sticker Trading". Redbelly Culture. Retrieved 2023-08-29.
  24. ↑ "Sticker Bombing: The Effects of Stickers on the Graffiti Culture". Machine Studio. Retrieved 2023-08-29.
  25. ↑ "Hatch Sticker Museum". Atlas Obscura. Retrieved 2023-08-29.
  26. ↑ Kurutz, Steven (2009-07-30). "Artist Michael Anderson Creates Graffiti-Sticker Mural for the Ace Hotel Lobby -- New York Magazine - Nymag". New York Magazine. Retrieved 2023-08-29.
  27. ↑ Lefrak, Mikaela (2019-02-04). "Stickering is an increasingly popular art form for D.C. artists, particularly women". The Washington Post. Retrieved 2023-08-19.
  28. ↑ Eliason, Robert (2020-03-17). "Art travels around the world with sticker packs". BenitoLink. Retrieved 2023-08-29.
  29. ↑ "Student art project is vandalism for a cause". The Herald-Times. 7 March 2010. Archived from the original on 20 March 2012. Retrieved 4 April 2011.
  30. ↑ "Making Engaged Art: Response and Intervention on Climate Change". The Canary Project. Retrieved 4 April 2011.
  31. ↑ Bierut, Michael; Friedman, Thomas; Morris, Edward; Siegel, Dimitri (2010). Green Patriot Posters. Metropolis Books. ISBN   978-1-935202-24-0.
  32. ↑ Bent, Gala (August 2, 2007). "Interview With Cindy Hinant". Asthmatic Kitty. Archived from the original on 29 November 2014. Retrieved 20 November 2014. Cindy Hinant's installations are luridly colorful collections of objects that seem to gather and spill out of otherwise ignored corners. Some of her materials are masses of bright and shiny stickers, girliness with the volume on ten.
  33. ↑ Zucker Saltz, Lizzie (2009). Crafting Romance. Athens: Athens Institute of Contemporary Art. p. 5.
  34. ↑ Watt-Grade, Susan (September 19, 2007). "Cindy Hinant: Cascades". Nuvo. Retrieved 20 November 2014.
  35. ↑ Shepard Fairey interview in Tattoo Magazine, 1999. "I finally got a notification from his [Andre the Giant's] estate that I couldn't use the phrase "Andre the Giant" in any images or use his face in anything. The thing is, and this is why I had to shut my website down and change the name from www.andrethegiant.com to www.obeygiant.com., [is that] because the WWF owns the name obey giant... ..But in the more recent images that I've done, the face has changed enough from the original likeness to not be copyright infringement. So what I'm gonna do is still make the original sticker, just not sell them or put that name on any clothing that I could get a lawsuit for. As far as the fine art domain, it's totally open. Warhol didn't get sued for using Marilyn Monroe's likeness, as long it was changed enough."Archived July 8, 2007, at the Wayback Machine

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