Cut, Paste and Sticker! Can We Make Tech Fun Again?

Going home for Independent Learning Week never fails to feel like stepping into a time capsule. Like many parents, mine have turned my absence into an opportunity to transform my childhood bedroom into extra storage; each corner is now stacked with clunky cables and gadgets that haven’t been switched on in years. However, despite their long-dead batteries, these devices feel more alive than the technology I use daily to write notes, stream television and pay for a study-break coffee.

Conveniently, the week before Independent Week I had already fallen into a nostalgia rabbit hole with Nintendo releasing Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen on the Switch along with the new Tomodachi Life on the way. Instead of ignoring the old devices my mum has neatly stacked in my room, I dug them out. As I booted them up, I was entranced by the sheer amount of personality technology used to possess, causing me to investigate the promotional material of these. From my research I discovered that not only did technology look more vibrant, but it was also marketed with creativity and personality.

The recent online resurgence of Frutiger Aero, an aesthetic that romanticised the capabilities of technology, with glossy and bubble-filled designs that dominated the early-2000s, has led many to wonder where our optimism about technological possibilities went. Companies like Apple and Sony dominated the early 2000s to the mid-2010s with tech that was bursting with colour, patterns, and abstract textures. Laptops came in translucent neon plastic and handheld devices felt like toys as much as machines, playful and experimental without any hesitance.

Perhaps the most literal example of this approach was Nintendo’s GameCube, one of the gadgets now sitting in my room. It was exactly what the name implies, a clunky purple cube with a handle slapped on, designed to run video games. If released today, a console like that would feel absurd and overly simplistic, but switching it on felt approachable and fun, rather than like handling a fragile piece of expensive, glass technology.

The playfulness of these gadgets stretched beyond the functionalities themselves, with inventive and humorous advertising to match. Sony’s old PlayStation promotions merged everyday situations with bizarre imagery, transforming mundane scenarios into absurdity, suggesting that tech was for everyone. Many of these quirky campaigns feel closer to pieces of art rather than just tactical marketing. 

Source: Tumblr

Today, most advertisements are sleek, practical and straight-to-the-point, but lack a sense of passion and creativity behind them. Devices are now compact and practical, but feel overly sterile: grey, aluminium and anonymous. Everything looks the same, and the newest iPhone seems no different from its preceding models. This is far removed from what many of us imagined technology would be when we first saw our older sibling’s neon iPhone 5C or the colourful Pear Phones in shows like iCarly and Victorious. Arguably, this shift towards minimalism comes from companies’ efforts to make devices appear timeless. To be honest, bright plastic gadgets haven’t particularly aged the best, and a sleek laptop looks just as acceptable in a university lecture hall as it does in a corporate office.

There are many ways in which people have begun pushing back against this uniformity of modern technology through everyday acts of personalisation. Stickers are one of the most visible examples: in the Main Library you’ll see laptops adorned in band logos, niche memes, and society collectives, each one adding individuality to an otherwise identical device. This customisation extends to phone cases, where transparent cases filled with designs, polaroids, and accessories allow the slab of glass we carry all day to reflect personal character. Not only are we able to modify the exteriors of our devices, but the introduction of widgets has been a game changer in how users organise their home screens. Previously, personalisation rarely went beyond changing our wallpapers, but now we have control over digital interfaces. Together, these modifications allow phones and laptops to become more than purely functional technologies, instead acting as curated and experimental representations of personal identity.

In a way, these stickers and decorations represent what once existed within the design of technology itself, sporting colour, individuality, and personality. While I'm glad that I don’t carry a clunky Nokia brick phone, it’s important that if tech companies won’t make devices with personality, I’ll add it myself.