Berlin’s stickers are one of the many sources of inspiration you take in during our creative retreat in Berlin, and you get to make your own stickers while you’re there!
During a recent research trip to Berlin for our latest creative retreat, we couldn’t get over the sheer volume of stickers. Stickers on signposts, stickers on walls, stickers in the bathroom stalls, stickers on stickers… Stickers everywhere!
The street art in the Berlin districts of Kreuzberg, Friedrichshain and Mitte is world-famous, to be sure. The East Side Gallery on the Berlin wall alone is of course worth seeing, but there’s so much more. A stroll around the area to see all the ‘unofficial’ street art – the colourful murals, the stencils and paste-ups, the cheeky metal sculptures, the variety of graffiti from quick tags to advanced paint-roller efforts down the side of buildings – is hugely inspiring.
This is especially cool for anyone who gets a kick out of the kind of creativity that wants to be seen and doesn’t ask for permission.
And there’s something about the sheer volume of stickers that runs like a track of staccato percussion over the top of the regular snappy wild rhythms of graffiti in Berlin.
You see them everywhere, from pops of random colour, to designs subverting pop culture icons and brands, to protest statements and counter-protest statements, to 80s-inspired nightclub ads, to hand-drawn characters and doodles.
As that famous adage goes: in a gold rush, don’t dig for gold, sell shovels. And in Berlin’s case, any business selling sticker printing services would do well. In fact, Magnus Hedin, CMO of Swedish sticker printing service Stickerapp has said “Berliners have this amazing ability to mix humour and rebellion, and stickers are the perfect medium for that. They’re quick, easy to slap up, and unlike graffiti, they feel more like a personal message rather than public art. I think it’s their way of saying, ‘Here’s what I stand for.’“
Draw your own stickers at our Berlin creativity retreat!
So yes, of course one of the creative activities we do in our Berlin creative retreat is to make our own stickers! We supply Avery sticker sheets (in different sizes), and take our participants through a short set of creativity-inducing steps, to get everyone drawing stickers of whatever tickles their fancy.
And what everyone does with those stickers is… well… let’s just say we go for a walk around outside after the activity.
Truly, when it comes to stickers, Berlin isn’t messing around, and it’s such a rush for our Inking Abroad participants to be inspired by this sticker culture, and then respond by creating their own. If you want to make a statement, and don’t want to wait for permission to show the world, we think you’ll love our Berlin retreat! You can find out more here.
More sticker inspiration
If you can’t get enough of Berlin’s sticker vibe (and we can’t either), here are some great links and places that have inspired us:
- Don’t miss the Haus Schwarzenberg courtyard, Rosenthaler Straße 39 (Mitte district), for more graffiti than you’ve ever seen in your life! Our very own walking tour guide Bulky Savage is famous for having the longest-running mural piece here EVER!
- Berlin has a dedicated sticker museum: the Hatch Sticker Museum has over 30,000 different stickers!
- Is there a website for people to capture their favourite stickers, spotted in Berlin? Of course there is.
- Hooked blog has a page chock-full of photos of stickers spotted around Berlin