How to Design Stickers for Sale

The hardest part of starting a sticker business is figuring out exactly what the stickers will look like. With so many possibilities, your first challenge will be to narrow down your branding and style, then figure out how to optimize them into stickers.

Find your niche and get inspired

With so many sticker shops out there, you need to discover your own unique aesthetic.

Ilona was inspired by her cat Milkie to create a cute cartoon version that she remixed into different designs.

cute illustrated cat sticker

Photo courtesy: Milkteanco

Christine Lee is the owner of Created by Christine. She chose to make stickers filled with positive emotions and inspirational quotes. She also draws inspiration from the day-to-day work of a first-grade teacher and creates stickers for other educators.

"Positivity is important to me, like my focus in class, so I always like to have positive quotes," she said.

Think about what you already love to paint or create, as well as your own identity and personality.

consider:

your hobbies and interests

your favorite art style

community you belong to

What do you find inspiring

which messages or symbols represent your personality

Also consider scalability. If your niche is too small, only a small percentage of customers will want to buy your stickers.

You can also browse other sticker stores for inspiration, but don't copy other people's work. Having unique jobs will help your business stand out and attract customers.

create your art

The drawing method used by Ilona and Christine is the iPad and the app Procreate, an art program designed for tablets. It pairs perfectly with the Apple Pencil, allowing you to draw, color and texture anything you want to create. You can also download new brushes for free or for a fee to extend the functionality of the app.

While Procreate is a common choice, any digital art program, like Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator, or a free program like GIMP, can be used to create stickers.

A sticker labeled "To Do: Attend."

You can also scan non-digital art into a computer program to turn into stickers.

The bottom line is that any artwork you use should be at least as big as you plan to print at the final sticker size. It should also be at least 300 dpi (dots per inch) and saved as a CMYK file to ensure the final product has the same quality and color as your design.

Finally, if you plan to make individual stickers that are not simple squares or circles, you need to have a clear, well-defined border so the printer or your home cutter will know where to cut the edge stickers. Many people choose to draw a white border around their designs, but you can experiment with different colors.