The best and most enjoyable experiences and ideas are those you create for yourself, to enjoy and love. You don’t wait for validation from anyone, nor do you care if they are commercially viable. The goal is to open a door or create a product for yourself that you enjoy every time you use it. This is exactly what I am doing with the project I will discuss in this post.
The Story Begins in the 90s
In the mid-90s, the Khairi Class company in Syria (I’m not sure if they were known or distributed their products in other Arab countries) released chewing gum, or “meska” as we call it, with each wrapper containing a rectangular sticker featuring scenes from popular cartoons of the time like “Captain Majid, Mowgli, Captain Tsubasa, Rami the Fisherman, Kung Fu School,” and others.
The company’s commercial goal was for kids to buy large quantities of gum to collect the stickers they could paste into the “designated album,” and they succeeded with our generation. There were rare or missing stickers that had a raised stamp, encouraging kids to buy more gum each time.
Although I managed to complete one of the albums and received a “Robin Hood” T-shirt as a reward, my real interest was in cutting out the characters from the stickers and using them to play on the table—a 2D playing style that my brother Mohannad and I invented, and we spent hours enjoying.
Over the next two or three years, I took this interest further by dedicating a notebook to collect all the stickers and images of the cartoons I was watching at the time. This notebook was one of my most prized possessions, and I still regret not taking it with me when I left Syria.
Stickersa
About four years ago, I registered the domain stickersa.com, preparing for a project related to stickers. I began thinking about this project before selling Picalica, and during the COVID-19 pandemic, I started experimenting with different printing companies, sticker papers, and cutting machines. However, these efforts halted when I moved to Romania.
What brought the idea back to life was registering my business in Romania, where I decided to add printed product sales to my design and digital products services. This motivated me to start the project on a small scale within what I am working on at Thamaneen, without needing a separate platform or website.
A Small Market
Currently, I imagine that I’ve rented a small kiosk for this project and started the experiment in the simplest way possible. The goal is to offer unique and distinctive products and designs with a story and purpose, not just meaningless phrases or drawings. In the coming period, I plan to send each client I’ve designed a logo for a set of stickers or coasters featuring their approved design, making it their first tangible product.
The current goal is fun and enjoyment. The printed products I design and offer for sale on Thamaneen are for amusement at this stage and may appeal to a small audience who appreciate this “80s” style.
The Next Goal
This project is built for fun and enjoyment, primarily for myself. My goal, as I envision it, is to send a link to the child I mentioned at the beginning of this post, and to everyone who still has that child inside them who collects and loves stickers, and then tell them:
Enter this site, register, and upload an image, text, or logo. We will turn it into a unique design and send it to your doorstep printed in a reasonable quantity and excellent quality inside a beautiful red envelope.
Of course, if you have any suggestions, ideas, advice, or experiences, I’d be very happy to share them with me. And always, thank you for your time.