SLAUGHTERNEKO'S ULTIMATE GUIDE TO STICKER SLAPS!
I started making sticker slaps in ~2018 and continue to do it to this day. Stickers are a fun, relatively cheap and easy way to share your art with the world, meet new people and generally create cool shit in the publich sphere.
One thing I've noticed however, is that it's very difficult to find a consistent and comprehensive guide on how to design, make, and post sticker slaps. Usually I've found guides either cover one or two elements of making slaps, gloss over details, and don't generally prepare someone properly for all the considerations of the craft.
I want to fix that by writing my own!
Note that this means this guide is going to be thorough and cover elements I'm constantly thinking about when making sticker slaps. Wherever possible I'm going to attempt to tie this into my own personal experiences making slaps, which means it's going to be from the perspective of a white man artist living in Canada. This guide might even include things pertinent to non-slap sticker varities too!
Sticker Slaps (also known as 'Slaps') are a form of graffiti where a user adheres their art to a surface, usually by means of adhesive paper. This is distinct from other forms of posting such as wheatpasting which relies on an external bonding agent to achieve a similar effect.
Sticker Slaps can most often be found in urban areas on poles, power boxes, buildings, and generally any non-porous surface a sticker can be fastened to. They can display political messages, messages soliciting businesses, offers, graffiti tags or no message at all!
Some reasons people choose sticker slaps as a graffiti medium:
Before we dive in too much, there are two major types of processes to consider when making slaps: Printing or Handmade. Knowing which approach you're aiming to execute is good to keep in mind from hereon out.
Printed slaps are typically...well just a design printed to a page via a printer, similar to how one might print a page off a computer. Handmade slaps are drawn on the paper directly. Generally speaking, handmade slaps are more personal, but more time consuming to create, making each slap a bit more precious.
If you're making slaps via printing, I'd generally recommend printing your slaps with a printing service which may save time and money. Generally if you've never placed sticker slaps before, I'd advise you print a few stickers from an on-demend printing service like StickerApp instead of buying the materials and doing it all by hand. This will let you practice the act of slapping and seeing if it's right for you - no use buying lots of stuff only to find out you don't like doing slaps in the first place!
In my experience, Materials can often be the difference between a good quality slap and a bad quality one. The type of materials you use will also depend on whether or not you're going with the printed or handmade approach listed above.
Printing From A Third Party: It's possible to print slaps from third party sticker sellers. Everyone has different opinions about which supplier is best; typically my go-to is StickerApp as they offer a fair price, very UV resistant vinyl finish, solid preview features and have die cut options (don't use StickerMule as the founder is a far-right piece of shit). You can check around local suppliers, but make sure to ask about their UV resistance and remember if for some reason the police try to find you, a local print shop might be the first place they ask.
If it's your first time making slaps I'd highly recommend printing with a third party first to test your designs and try out the act of slapping without needing to invest in too many tools or materials.
STICKER PAPER: Obviously, this is the most important ingredient to making slaps because it's what you make the slaps on!
For Printed slaps, virtually any vinyl sticker paper you'll find online or at a store works fine. Check out reviews before buying like you would any product; steer away from products that seem like they have trouble sticking, as it means your stickers might fall off. Make sure you buy the right paper for the type of printer you're using (inkjet vs. laser printer - Laser printers will be harder to find papers for). Generally Matte or Gloss is down to personal preference (I'm not picky and will typically use whichever is cheaper). Some products may be labelled waterproof, but in my experience this doesn't matter as few stickers are made for outdoor use and we'll be doing the proofing ourself. I wouldn't advise using clear sticker paper as I find this typically doesn't have the same impact or staying power as regular white vinyl.
For Handmade slaps my advice would largely be same as above, but you're likely going to want to choose sticker paper that has been pre-cut into discrete chunks (unless you want to make full-paper size pieces of course!). Typically this will be in the form of label paper that you can find these at dollar stores, stationary stores like Staples, or art stores. The party nametags with "Hello My Name Is _____" are one of the favourites of many slap artists because they're cheap and reliable, and it's common to see such patterns used by slap artists. If the paper you choose is thin you may need to avoid painting on it with heavy materials like dense paints or markers, as it will ruin the adhesive if it soaks through.
If you are in Amercia (I am not), allegedly shipping labels from the USPS are free and amazing quality and are among the most sought-after type of label for Americans to paint on, so if you can go to your post office and ask for some blank labels you may have access to some already! These are known as 228 labels and are fairly ubiquitous in graffiti. In addition, I started doing slaps with just Post-It notes and permanent markers - it's not very adhesive but are very easy to get access to.
PRINTERS:Most home printers are sufficient for printing slaps as most sticky paper is compatible with standard inkjet printers. Most people will have inkjet printers, and laser printers will generally be harder to find ahesive paper for. Laser printers also tend to run hot and may warp your sticker paper and not play well with it, so keep that in mind when buying paper to ensure it's Laser compatible. Print them slow and be sure not to let them smudge one another as they come out. Avoid Thermal printers (i.e. the kind used to print receipts) because while these are cheap to create with they are heat-based and will completely blur away when placed outdoors.
TOOLS: If you're handmaking slaps, you can generally paint with any medium you could paint with normal paper on. If you need to cut your labels manually for whatever reason, sharp scissors, exacto knife, spare exact blades, and cutting board are handy tools to have. These are all also handy to have in the case of printing slaps as well, but whether you need to cut or not depends on your final design, its size, etc.
If you're hand-making your slaps or printing them yourself, I'd highly recommend picking up a can of clear vinyl gloss coating spray - the same type used as finish on car bodies. You can get these from hardware stores or online. If you put your slap outside it's probably going to be in direct sunlight, and whether you're inking or printing your materials can wear quickly under the sun. From my observations, stickers without this can fade in a couple of weeks, but pieces applied with this coating spray can last upwards of a few months. It can be a little pricy, but in my experience this can extend the life of your pieces significantly. As a bonus, one can will potentially last you years depending on how often you're using it - I've had the same can for 3 years now and it's still half full. I'll talk a bit about considerations for actually spraying it a little later on this page.
SOFTWARE: If you're printing slaps yourself, you'll likely need software to properly plan out your sticker sheets to make cutting and readying them for cutting easier. For illustrating my designs I use Clip Studio Paint (which I like because it has a one-time fee). I plan my slap sheets with Affinity Publisher as it has a good set of guides, measures and such to coordinate different slap sizes to maximize the space on the page.
As stickers are art it's not really my place to tell you what your piece should or shouldn't look like. However, I am going to list some considerations to keep in mind when designing a slap on a macro level.
Size: Generally speaking, when designing a slap you'll want it to be large enough that someone on the street will notice it - duh! Typically for this I land on anywhere between 4-6 inches. Larger slaps are possible (the largest I do is typically the size of a sheet of letter paper). However keep in mind that huge slaps may be more likely to draw unwanted attention and also more likely to be taken down as a result. They also will require more resources (inks, paper, etc) to print if you're doing a lot of them. It's totally possible to design slaps larger than a piece of paper, but it will usually be more expensive and may require more specialized equipment which is beyond the scope of this guide - however if you really want to print REALLY big then it's possible to print to multiple pieces of paper and then frankenstein them together.
Detail: Slaps can be as detailed as you want, but obviously keep in mind your slap's overall size when you detail it. Smaller sticker sizes don't pair well with highly detailed pieces, as smaller details in your design like tonemaps, hatching or fine writing are likely to go unnoticed by the average viewer altogether.
Colors: Generally, I'd argue adding color to your slap is good. I'm not sure if you've walked around a major city centre recently but they're often bland, brown/grey messes. A splash of bright saturated colors are more likely to draw the eye and catch a passerby's attention. If your printer isn't color however, you may have to work in black and white only.
Shape: Shape is a really important consideration for slaps, because the shape factors in to a lot of the work required to finalize it. If you're cutting your stickers by hand, here's two main kinds of sticker shapes you'll want to consider:
However, don't underestimate how much work cutting out your slaps can be. Die cuts look nice, but the novelty wears off when you have to sit down and exacto-knife cut out 70 of them in one sitting. Some people might enjoy this process, but I don't which is why I usually just do straight cuts nowadays. Some tools can help alleviate the process of cutting die cut stickers (such as the Cricut), but generally I've found the process of cutting die cuts to be painful either way. It's your call, so just play around with it and land on the style you enjoy the most.
Another consideration of shape is that it can affect how easy your stickers are to tear, and how fragile parts of them can be. If you have a sticker design that has, for example, an appendage that sticks out from the rest of the design it's likely that that element could break away or tear more easily as you try to peel it off its backing. In this respect, it's better to plan your sticker designs to be congruous and without any sections that extend too far out from the general shilouette of the piece
Signature: Some artists like to include their signature in their designs. This can help people search for your work, connect you to other local artists who might see your work, and generally is good for visibility on your other work. However, the risk is that it's easier for people like law enforcement and obsessive landowners to track you down too, so it's a double-edged sword. Some people like to include a full username while others opt to simply use a handle, while others do nothing at all. It's totally down to your comfort level, but generally I find being just a little searchable is better than leaving nothing for people to find you with at all.
BEYOND HERE IS A WIP!
Obviously if you're creating art that will be viewed by someone in the public sphere, you should have a message to send to them. It can be explicit ("Free Palestine", "Follow my Social Media page", "Buy my products", etc), or more implicit ("Look at this art I made").
I think that no matter what you're planning on posting, it will always have a message whether you do that intentionally or not, so it behooves you to be aware of what yours is as early in the process as possible. Knowing what you want to say helps you better build a plan to say it.
Depending on your level of experience, you might be coming at designing stickers from different levels. Keep that in mind as you develop your idea. Are you planning to draw a big elaborate
Myth: "Sticker Slaps are actually legal!"
Please never assume your graffiti is legal. I've heard this from a few slap artists themselves, but remember just because someone has not be prosecuted doesn't mean it's legal. That's dangerous territory.
This isn't to scare you, but to simply encourage an abundance of caution. Yes, Slaps are relatively safe compared to other graffiti mediums like spray tags or markers, as they don't leave lasting damage, and are easily removed by propety owners or service workers. Cops are lazy and rarely want to deal with the trouble of processing you for what is a very petty offense - it it not because they don't have the power to.