We here at the AIM have gone a little sticker crazy lately. Its an easy and arguably smart thing to do. Stickers have legs so to speak. For a relatively small amount, you can get a batch of 500 to 1000 stickers printed in a very short amount of time (less than a week it turns out). You can fit them in your suitcase with ease (unlike a box of T-shirts) and bring them with you to distribute at events like we did recently at SXSW in Austin. You can casually hand them out to people you meet, leave them on a table for people to pick up (or throw away) or stick them around town and document via photography as AIM design team member Justin Kirk did. Seeing them perpetuated on laptops the way we used to for skateboards and surfboards is how the stickers grow legs. We nerds take these back to our cubical farms and ride the ‘geekboards’ all day long meeting after meeting thus exposing others to our super cool way of life manifested as individual expression in the form of a collage of mass-produced stick ons.

Days prior to the event, AOL announced that Open AIM would go even more ‘open’. In doing so, the design team was asked to explore logo options for the program. In the end, it was decided that there were some clever ideas that would make great stickers. And so… stickers we made…

<AIM>
Inspired by Julie Bethke, this design represents the use of an ‘open’ tag with the word AIM inside of it thus implying ‘Open AIM’.

Sticker and mark design by Tom Osborne (me speaking in third person). Mark inspired by Julie Bethke.

Skatewing
By taking a bite out of the traditional AIM bubble (creating an opening in it) a new form takes life. Most people think this looks like a hawk or skatewing. Cool how it takes on different meaning based on your own perspective.

Mark design by John Clarkson. Sticker design by Tom Osborne.

Come On In
Taking a cue from storefront neon signs, this design displays the word ‘Open’ in neon style lettering inside the AIM bubble shape to welcome in people to the Open AIM program.

Sticker and mark design by Tom Osborne.

Pixnay
One of our newest experiences is Pixnay, a vanity competition pitting profile photos in a head to head competition. This project was brilliantly conceived by some talented interns this past summer. Post your photo and take your chances of becoming ‘Hottie of the Day’.

Sticker design by Valli Ravindran.

Come see us at the next big conference where we’ll be sure to have some stickers to give away.

Special thanks to Gian Cruz, Alisa Schadt, John Clarkson, Mike Macadaan, David Robinson, Chris Dargis, Greg Cypes, Andy Wick, Robert West and Jill Carillo for ideas and contributions along the way.

Originally posted on design.aim.com on April 17, 2008.

Inspired by a DIY mask in the likeness of famed designer, typographer and instructor Wolfgang Weingart the AIM Product Design Team recently banded together to make our own variation of the Weingart mask.

The original Weingart mask was found on Flickr uploaded back in 2005 by laughingmonk.

What originally seemed like a fun little way for one of the gods of typography to watch over our little design team…

soon became a way for us to individually express our status in a way uniquely ‘AIM’. Each person added their own little touch for our first display of these at our inaugural design summit back in December ‘07.

That’s how we ’say it’, how do you?

Originally posted on design.aim.com on April 8, 2008.