Apple Catches Up

Macbook owners have been slapping decals from their favorite apps, teams and brands all over their Macbook lids for years and in the process turning their once elegant but impersonal machine into a cluttered and colorful wonderland. Now that Apple has officially endorsed creative stickers being used on MacBooks, DesignCrowd thought it would be fun to ask our own designer community to design a useful Macbook decal or sticker to fit onto the external lid of a Macbook.

Millions of Macbook Stickers, But Nary A Useful Sticker Among Them - Until Now

There are thousands of MacBook cover stickers out there, great ones in fact. But one thing they all fail to do is actually be useful. It got us thinking about which professions that would benefit from having a useful decal to refer to when required.

Professions like...

• Student: periodic and multiplication tables, formula charts or world maps.
• Designer: colour charts, the golden ratio or a ruler.
• Ship Captain: map of world shipping routes.
• Zoologist / Vet: skeletal chart of common pets - dog, cat, bird or Guinea pig
• Doctor: human anatomy chart.
• Hairdresser: Visual steps showing you how to do various tie knots or hair styles.

Macbook Sticker Contest Showcase!

Over 30 designers from around the world competed in this design contest. Below we showcase the most interesting/useful designs. From interactive designs to measurement tools, our designers came up with some awesome useful sticker designs like a ruler that glows in the dark and space for post-it notes. Ace! Congratulations to Croatin designer Kresh who took out the top prize for his awesome sticker for designers that includes a ruler, protactor, mood rating tool, check list and conversion table.

Photoshop Shortcuts and Multiplication Tables:

Periodic Tables and Measurement Tools:

Interactive decals:

Tongue-in-cheek Macbook sticker decals:

Winning Design by Kresh:

View more designs from the Macbook Sticker Contest

Purple Cows & Walking Billboards

How cool were those designs?! Time for some purple cow thinking for your own brand strategy. As consumer technology becomes highly personalised and permanently by our sides, the hardware starts to look like an interesting marketing opportunity.

Take the creative industries - where Macbook notebooks are ubiquitous - professionals from developers, startups, entreperneurs, photographers, through to publishers, writers, designers and creatives cart around their laptops, iPads and iPhones from cafes to presentations. Those little Macbook lids are prime uncaptured advertising real estate. Businesses looking to stand out should consider crowdsourcing a cool sticker design like we did. If you combine slick branding with utility that makes your customer's life easier, your decal will be irresistible and your brand top of mind in your customer's mind.

Which was your favorite design? What useful sticker ideas did you think of? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

Written by Jo Sabin on Wednesday, September 17, 2014

Jo Sabin is Head of Designer Community at DesignCrowd. She's led the company's public relations and social media programs since 2012. With more than ten years' experience working with Australian and international tech startups in the creative industries, Jo has been instrumental in meeting DesignCrowd's objectives in Australia and abroad. Get in touch via Twitter.