Stickers.pub Doors are now open!

We can’t wait to find out your thoughts about it! Here’s a short overview of what we’ve been doing until launch ☺

Stickers.Pub doors are finally opened!

Hi guys and girls.

This is our first post. It was a long journey which started ~14 months ago when we were developing the Theme Market Script.

TMS actually has more than 90 thousands lines of code.

After we implemented it successfully on ThemeSnap.com (which now has more than ten thousands members) we wanted to move forward and create a marketplace with physical goods which would let artists upload their artwork and us to produce and deliver stickers based on that artworks.

This is how the sticker page actually looks now on stickers.pub

The idea is simple:

Artists focus on creation. We produce and deliver. Clients enjoy!

This way we help great talented artists from all over the world earn some income while doing what they like - creating awesome designs.

“Why stickers?” you might wonder. Well because stickers are those items which can be applied on a really huge list of objects. Cars, bikes, cups, laptops, phones, other devices, wall, door, notebooks, laptops, etc. No other customizable object can be applied to a list of objects as big as stickers can. Take for example a t-shirt: you can’t stick it on your car. Or on your phone. Plus stickers are small and relativelly cheap to deliver to the end user.

When we started all this, we understood that we have a lot to learn from the production point of view. So we started to research.

Stickers Materials

At first we thought that there is only one type of print vinyl. Boy we were wrong. There are a lot of types and the quality differs a lot. For our stickers we chose the Orafol Orajet vinyl with Rapid Air technology. It costs 4 or even 5 times more than the average, but here’s what it “does”:

• Comes with a great adhesive which lets you reposition the sticker (especially when you have a big surface, like an iPad or MacBook Pro). The adhesive isn’t very strong at first, but once you’ve applied the cover and a couple of hours pass, it becomes permanent as it’s very durable. One more important aspect of this adhesive is the fact that it can be removed without leaving any dirt.

• It can be applied not only on flat surfaces. It bends and takes the shape of the object it is applied on. Of course you can’t expect miracles from it, but it works just fine on rounded surfaces like the iPhone’s 6 corners.

Check out the corners ;)

• RapidAir technology means that the vynil has a texture on the adhesive side which lets all the air to be easily released after application of the sticker / skin / cover so it remains air bubble free. Normal (even expensive vinyl) doesn’t have this feature.

Observe the texture.

1. The back of the vinyl is grey (instead of white) this way making sure that the film isn’t as transparent as a regular one. Applying it on colored surfaces doesn’t affect the printed design this way.
2. It’s waterproof — of course.

Now, we were very concerned that even if we print on such a material, for example the phone skins or tablets / laptop covers will get exposed to a lot of factors, such as physical contact (friction, rubbing, scratching, etc.) or direct sunlight which can affect the inks over time.

All our stickers / skins / covers are laminated with a durable laminate layer. All of them.

That’s why we decided to apply a lamination layer to all our stickers to make them last a lot. For this we use Orafol’s Oraguard laminate. It has UV protection, it’s scratch resistant and it comes in glossy and matte finishes.

Behaves well in outdoor conditions too

Right. What about printing and cutting?

Long story short: we’ve made some research and chosen one of the best brands for that. Roland. And we’ve chosen to use only original eco-solvent Roland inks.

These are the first actual samples which were printed on a Roland machine, but on a different material. We could see the print quality though.

We had to travel a lot to see for ourselves the entire process, to get actual samples and make a decision. We can’t say we didn’t enjoy the process ☺

It was sunny…

… and it snowed.

But that didn’t stop us.

It was a hard decision because artists do a great job on the artwork side. There are a lot of elements which have to have a very high quality on the end product. We’re not talking here about billboards at which people look from a big distance (and the print resolution can be easily 150 dots per inch). These are small prints at which people looks closely. So every details is important.

Calibrating and setting up correctly the printer is very important

Plus this kind of equipment is quite expensive. Of course. So we had to think more than twice before investing in it.

Well, our Roland machine prints at a 1440 dots per inch resolution and details look stunning. And the cutting is handled by the Roland machine too. So, we’re covered on all these aspects.

Stickers.Pub Website

Though it’s mostly based on TMS, as I mentioned before, we had a lot of new things to implement. A completely new design compatible with mobile devices, a nice usable cart and all the delivery part.

We had to pay attention to the mobile version too

There are a lot of aspects on the upload part. We tried to make that as easy as possible for the authors and keep them focused on creation of new awesome artwork, not on adaptation for different formats of devices (as we’re planning to roll out support for more and more devices).

We also contacted a lot of authors and sent them samples of how the final products will look like with their designs.

Everybody’s excited!

And now we’re finally opened to the public. You can purchase any published design and make the payment via PayPal or Stripe (debit and credit cards payment processor).

If you’re an artist and want to join us in our journey, feel free to contact us at hi [at] stickers.pub and we’ll check out your portfolio and open your own stickers shop ;)

And of course, check out www.stickers.pub and let us know your thoughts.

Thanks!