“The submitted works were very quality, and they were beyond our imagination”, said Ali Radmand, The judge of the first sticker year contest.
The first full-service Igap sticker year contest was held, and the jury selected 50 works than 518 submitted works. Ali Radmand is one of the first artists that has worked in sticker field very much in Iran and he is one of the jury. He said that the submitted works of the first contest were very interesting. We have interviewed him about this contest and judgment techniques.
First, he talked about how he has started sticker designing and what works he has provided:
“In 2015, I provided my first work as a sticker. I inspired it by a frog I had designed for Gol Agha magazine and it was noticed by the readers very much. Telegram users liked this sticker very much and it was set about 5 million times in this foreign application.
Then I provided pomegranates stickers for Yald night, it was noticeable too. Now I do designing and making stickers besides making characters for different brands and companies which is my main job. I have also designed Mr.Damagh for Mahak.
What is the main properties of a good sticker?
- For designing a sticker, a designer should pay attention to what are the most popular moods used by users and which style they follow. A successful sticker set should have 50 different moods and it contains anything users want. The users search the stickers, which help them to say their moods and emotions.
How do you evaluate the submitted works to the contest?
- They were very attractive and some of them were beyond our imaginations. The sticker design method was very interesting for us. Some of the designs had very good illustration, but they couldn’t be considered as a sticker. Illustration and sticker are very different. A sticker has some properties which differentiate it from cartoon and caricature. A sticker is used in a small environment, so when a person designs a sticker, he should notice that the details are unimportant. Many details are not seen in a small sticker. The most important element in a sticker is the mood and feeling transmitted to the user.
A sticker designer should be able to transmit his considered feeling in a small space. Some designers didn’t pay attention their stickers are used in colorful places. A sticker may appear in the backgrounds in a different color. A sticker may be used in a black or blue background, so a designer should consider a sticker appear well in these spaces.
I hope these problems will be solved in the second stage. But I should say that the submitted works are very good and we hope the future.
What do you think about organizing this contest?
- This is a very good event because we have good illustrators in Iran but they don’t work very much in sticker designing and we don’t see prominent works. This event is a good place for Iranian illustrators and designers to start sticker designing and develop it in different spaces until we don’t need foreigner stickers.
It is very good this contest is organized by an Iranian social media, IGap. So an Iranian messenger uses Iranian stickers and it is based on Iranian culture and style. I hope IGap continues holding this contest and develops designing the Iranian sticker field.
What do you think about the sticker design job market and its entrepreneurship?
When a sticker is notable and popular, it is possible to earn money. When stickers developed in domestic messengers and users like using these messengers, famous brands and companies would like to order their special stickers. So designing the stickers, illustrating and making character are developed and it becomes a good job market along with good payments for these artists.
Our artists don’t work on sticker designing very much, and most Iranian users use foreign messengers and uploading and sending the stickers have many problems, so they wouldn’t like work in this field. It is very important supporting these messengers and I believe that this contest can help them because people visited the exhibitions and they know about domestic messengers like IGap and domestic artists.
