You look up from your phone in Norbucks and see many things: the hustle and bustle of the nonstop coffee rush, misspelled names on venti lattes, that one egg chair that has never not been occupied...and, of course, stickers. Lots and lots of stickers. They adorn water bottles, backpacks and notebooks. But perhaps the most popular sticker canvas is the laptop.
More and more people are decorating the tops of their computers with stickers. They’re an attractive purchase for college students, fulfilling our need to be unique, sentimental and aesthetic at around a dollar a pop. For many, they act as more than stickers – like clothes, hair or nails, they’re extensions of our personalities.
Everyone has stories to tell. Many tell them through stickers.
Megan Ballew •
Comm '19
“These stickers say that I’m involved in a lot of different things and have a lot of different interests. I’m definitely on the sentimental value spectrum.”
- “Groucho’s deli is a deli in South Carolina. It’s a deli franchise, I worked there for two summers—it’s pretty cool.”
- “Beatbox is a company that a friend of mine worked for. I thought it was pretty...pretty.”
- “Studio 22 is a film board on campus. I’m the finance chair.”
- “Junior year of high school my school took us to Costa Rica, and this was a sticker from the company we traveled with.”
- “This was the name of my best friend in high school’s band.”
Kristina Karisch •
Medill '20
“The stickers say that I’m a grammar nerd, that I like foliage, and that I really like the city of London.”
- “On my original computer I had an actual underground sticker from London, but that computer broke. I ordered this on Redbubble….[London] is one of my favorite cities.” “I have the word ‘feminist’ in a flower heart because...feminism!”
- “I’m a grammar person, and people get it wrong all the time. And that pisses me off.”
- “A: I really like the word ‘ampersand.’ B: It’s floral. C: I love punctuation.”
- “I have birkenstocks and I wore socks with them when I was breaking them in.”
Ellie Levine •
Comm '20
“I think [the stickers] represent all of the weird, small, different things about me. I didn’t get any of them online just because I thought they looked cool; I got them from personal friends.”
- “This used to say ‘don’t forget to smile’ but then it started falling off so only ‘smile’ is left.
- “My high school photography teacher just started his own business...this was his logo. Most of the time I forget that it’s a sticker because it’s right in the middle.”
- “My current best friend gave it to me when we met in 7th grade, and...I just put it on this year as we parted ways...I was super weird in 7th grade and she was like, ‘this is very fitting for you.’”
- “Kind of a long story: I worked at a summer camp, and they have a touring youth circus. Our two staffs had a fun feud where we had this painting called Gulag Girl, and we liked to steal it from each other. One year they stole Gulag Girl for a very long time so we printed stickers that say ‘Free Gulag Girl.’”
Aditi Bhandari •
Medill '17
“I had had my laptop screen replaced and that I was trying to fill it all up again. Definitely a lot of general interest that I’ve shown [with these stickers].”
- “[At Disneyland]... we met this really nice guy who was just handing out Mickey Mouse stickers, and once he realized we were college students he started talking to us about his master’s degree in English and about his dreams in college. It was a really cool deep conversation that we did not expect to have at Disney World.”
- “Reppin the Knight Lab – I’m a student fellow.”
- “This is an octocat: the icon for GitHub.”
- “I saw this one [in a book of Harry Potter bumper stickers] and I was like, “I need this” because I’m pretty sure this is what Hagrid says when Harry says Voldemort’s name for the first time.”
- “One of the cutest ones, I think, is definitely my Totoro sticker that one of my friends got me for Christmas. It’s from a Japanese movie called ‘My Neighbor Totoro.’”
- “German for ‘Let me be colorful.’ My friend brought it back for me after studying abroad in Germany.”
- “From SHAPE. Boobs and a vagina.”
Mia Lennon •
Comm '20
“[Stickers are] just a way to show who I am and express what I think is cool. A lot of them are musicians that I like. I also do theater, so I have some things that show that.”
- “‘Who tells your story.’ I like Hamilton, like everyone else on this planet, but also the idea of telling your own story is very important to me. I like theater, but also writing and other subjects. That’s kind of why I’m here at Northwestern.”
- “Miami skyline – 305 pride!”
- ““I may be sitting in the library by myself and someone’s like, ‘Oh I like the band Saint Motel.’”
- “Hillary Clinton – of course.”
Rachel Fimbianti •
Comm '20
“I also try to pick ones where, unless you really know what the sticker says or what it’s from, you won’t really get it. It kind of strikes up a conversation. This is a part of me that I’m not afraid to show."
- “This one is a quote from Newsies. I guess it kind of reminds me that in order for things to happen, people need to do something about them and make them known.”
- “In the midst of all of the shootings and the terrorist attacks and the world not getting along, it’s just to kind of remind me that hope is not lost. The world may not have all of its shit together, but something’s still beautiful about it and the things people do still matter.”
- “This one is a quote from Meg in Hercules. I’m a huge Disney nerd and Meg is one of my favorite characters.”
- “One of my favorite movies growing up was Ghostbusters, so I bought this at C2E2, a comic book convention that my friends and I go to every year.”
- “I have a dachshund back home, and he’s kind of like my little baby. I don’t have any siblings, so he’s my little friend.”
- “My friends and I ended up calling ourselves the raptor squad after [seeing Jurassic Park] last summer. We went to Disney this summer together, so it kind of reminds me of that.”
- “Inside Out makes me cry without fail every single time.”
Jake Stein •
SESP ‘20
“I think I’m a pretty well-rounded person, but that’s not necessarily something you learn about someone just from seeing or talking to them briefly. I like to advertise my broad views; I like Parks and Recreation and Tame Impala and hip-hop music. It’s a good way to engage with people, I have had good conversations with people sparked by laptop stickers. It leads to good conversations . . . I think as I change some of my stickers will change, too.”
- “My favorite is probably North West. It’s a Northwestern logo with Kanye West and Kim Kardashian’s baby North West on it. I feel like a lot of professors look at it and are confused as to why I have a little baby on my laptop, but students always tell me that it’s funny.”
- “This one is the AIPAC logo, which is a pro-Israel organization. ’m a pretty politically involved person, I’m very open about my views. It’s not making some big statement, it’s just showing support.”
Gracie Aaronson •
Weinberg ‘20
“I love my stickers. They represent who I am in so many different ways. Just by looking at them, you can get an idea of what TV shows I like, my background, what is important to me, what things I hold near and dear to my heart. . . It was such a big part of my life, so for senior prom this guy took a picture of my laptop and recreated it as a promposal. They’re a really big part of my life. . . They all kind of represent a different part of my life, so the laptop can describe me.”
- “I really like the Northwestern one and the hamsa because I like the pattern in it.”
- “This one is the AIPAC logo, which is a pro-Israel organization. ’m a pretty politically involved person, I’m very open about my views. It’s not making some big statement, it’s just showing support.”
- I really like the New York one because it’s where i’m from. New York is a big part of my life.
- "A few people are confused by this one, it’s the characters from The Office. That one has definitely started a few conversations."
- "The Friends sticker has started a lot of conversations about TV and Netflix."
Isabella Borgula •
Weinberg ‘20
- “After I got my case, the first sticker I got was from Shaggy, which is a ski brand from Michigan.”
- “My favorite sticker is either this red one here, which is for the band Streetlight Manifesto, it’s this ska band. I went to their concert, it was wild. My other favorite would have to be my Tame Impala sticker.”
- "The two eyes are for Mo Pop, which is a music festival in Detroit. This year was its second year, so it’s really up and coming."
- “Neff is another brand of hats and other ski apparel.”
Terrence Stilson •
Weinberg ‘20
- “My favorite is probably this Facebook like sticker. There was a hackathon last year, and Facebook was here, so I just kind of went up and grabbed a sticker, even though I wasn’t part of the hackathon.”
- “I guess Sydney put it on there one day and wrote ‘I heart Sydney.’ That one wasn’t me.”
- "It’s cool seeing club sport stickers. I’m on the triathlon team, and I know a few years ago they had a Northwestern triathlon team sticker."
- “I kind of have the Facebook stickers and Custom Ink ones on here ironically.”
Josemanuel Hernandez •
McCormick ‘20
“I just ordered a NASA sticker, and I’m thinking of ordering this Star Trek gay pride sticker, it’s the Star Trek logo, but it’s rainbow.”
- “Last year at Wildcat Days I got this cool NU sticker and I got this bicycle sticker from the Office of Sustainability. I was like ‘where should I put these?’. I used to put stickers on my laptop, but I was graduating in a month, so I wanted to put it somewhere more permanent. That’s when I started collecting laptop stickers. The other day, someone saw the sticker with Queen lyric ‘I want to ride my bicycle,’ and we all started singing the Queen song. Then we played Queen songs for an hour just because someone read the sticker.”
- “I guess the Feel The Bern one is my favorite because I got it after he lost the primaries, so I got it kind of as an ‘FU.’”
- "This Lowell Observatory sticker I got when I went to the Grand Canyon with my family. I really like astronomy, so this observatory picture kind of [represents] that."
- “I collect vinyl records, and this is one of the record stores in Chicago that I go to a lot. They always give out stickers when you buy a record. My room at home has a bunch of these on the wall. Before I moved here I got this really nice record, it’s called Louder Than Bombs by The Smiths. It’s a compilation album, and I’ve wanted it for a while. I could never find it at Reckless Records, but one day before I went in randomly and found it.”