Alyssa McLean with her laptop (Louise Ineson)
By Louise Ineson
From clothing to hairstyle, cosmetics, and jewelry, there are countless ways we visibly express our personal identity to the world. In addition to how we fashion our own person, there are other emerging ways many students are expressing themselves: personalized and decorated items.
There are several daily necessities that many 4Cs students carry with them every day, including stationery, like notebooks and pens, daily hardware, like water bottles and backpacks, and technology, like student laptops and cell phones. There are those staple items we just can’t leave the house without. Of these daily essentials, there are endless ways to decorate through the use of stickers, pins and badges, or even your own art, but it’s technology and the faces of our laptops that are most frequently found with the personalized touch of a colorful sticker collage.
As an artist, I make it a habit to heavily decorate my personal items and daily necessities. I often find myself actively seeking out new enamel pins, stickers, and art for DIY stickers to decorate new or “bare” belongings and make them my own. In my experience, personalizing essential items is a creative endeavor; making stickers out of my own art and current favorite media to arrange them serves no real purpose aside from aesthetic pleasure and fun, but what motivates other 4Cs students to do the same?
Mason Valley says their stickers largely come from their interests and recreational fun, and that the “Dungeons and Dragons”-themed stickers on their laptop can also function as “conversation starters” among those with shared interests.
Alyssa McLean’s laptop is a colorful collection of stickers featuring a cartoon character she likes called “Pusheen the Cat.”
“(The laptop) was just white for a long time, and I just saw this sticker packet of ‘Pusheen,’” McLean says. So she decided to fill up the blank space with media she loves.
Christina Miller created an astronaut-themed laptop: “I wanted to be an astronaut… which I decided not to do … but I still like the aesthetics.”
Both Miller and student Colby Firnrohr say many of their stickers also reflect their communities and associations, from the logos of sandwich restaurant “Moto’s Pizza” to 4Cs’ own logo.
“It’s like a billboard of me,” Firnrohr says.
