The underappreciated creativity of laptop stickers

Laptops are the car bumpers of the digital age. Wherever you look in 2026, you’ll find laptops covered with collages of cultural artifacts and slogan-ised beliefs — much like the school bags, guitars, and fridge-freezers that came before them. So widespread has this phenomenon become, that even Apple has embraced it, with the latest MacBook ads flaunting devices covered in peel-able bagels, radio station logos, and pictures of Charlie Brown. 

And, with a 2025 consumer report projecting that the $1.2bn laptop skins market will more than double to $2.5bn by 2033, it’s clear this kind of customisation shows no signs of slowing down. This trend of embracing devices rendered imperfect feels particularly pertinent as BackMarket marks the launch of ‘The Ugly Computer’ – a new category recognising the overlooked value in devices with slight cosmetic wear, which are frequently dismissed for perceived imperfections, and so often end up as planet-polluting e-waste.

This new campaign champions 100% functional devices overlooked for their atypical appearances, which are worthy of a second life. “I believe through embracing aesthetic defects and especially sticker marks, we’re able to say something poetic with our tech,” says Adriane Gruau, a product manager at Back Market. 

But aside from the poetic leanings, why exactly do we decorate meticulously designed, high-value devices with such apparent nonchalance? Dr. Meredith A. Johnson, Professor of Rhetoric at the University of South Florida, was shocked by it in 2010, pondering the same question for her academic paper ‘Rhetoric of Ornament: Decorating Mobile Devices in the Aesthetic Economy’. This was still a time of “candy-coloured iMacs” and first-gen iPhones, she tells Back Market. “iPods were the cutting edge of mobile technology back then.”

Johnson, who works with college students, continues: “My current students’ motives haven’t changed much in the last 15 years. Laptop stickers are a way to communicate an emerging identity to their peers.” Some laptops are used to tell classmates about hobbies, such as gaming, or an individual’s placement in communities such as fraternities, sororities, and fandoms. Others pursue sticker-ing to “challenge dominant norms and aesthetics,” or “commemorate important places or shared events”. 

"Through embracing aesthetic defects and sticker marks, we’re able to say something poetic with our tech,” - Adriane Gruau, a product manager at Back Market.

The result is an ever-evolving tapestry of uniquely personal appliances that colour what might otherwise be a sea of dystopian grey tech tools — and that’s something worth celebrating. As the first MacBook approaches its 20th anniversary, this quiet act has become one of the most cherished modes of expression in the modern day. Daisy Shayler-Webb, a 37-year-old prop and set stylist from London, is “weirdly passionate about stickers”.

Her decorations serve as a snapshot of her interests — encompassing skate brands, comic-like graphic designs, and bands. “For a while, I couldn’t go to sleep without listening to Vondelpark,” she tells Back Market, referring to the yellow beak sticker on her 2009 MacBook. “Stickers [like this] are like little historical markers.” 

A similar passion claims the cover of a device owned by 27-year-old music manager Al Mills, who feels it offers a reflection of her everyday life. “I have two foundational loves, and that is The Velvet Underground and Jack Kerouac”, she says. The former sticker, taken from a 2019 collaboration between the ’60s New York band and clothes brand Supreme, is “so obnoxiously large that it deserves to have its own pride of place”, says Mills. “The face of John Cale lights up whenever I turn my laptop on.”

There is a collective desire to use stickers to protest, provoke, or show support for certain beliefs. While laptop devices express overt political views or an alliance with gender rights campaigners (‘Trans Joy is Magic’, says illustrator Boe La, 26, on hers), others offer an understated reflection of a healthy lifestyle. For Martin Aguilera, a 43-year-old screenwriter-filmmaker in Los Angeles, championing a cause is the product of a “selective and intentional” process that he adopted only recently.

“When I got a Mac, I decided that I didn’t necessarily want to do the advertising [for] corporations like Apple,” says Aguilera. “Blocking out the logo is a way to remove myself from that.” A self-declared bookworm and movie buff, he had intended to utilise an image of Pinhead from the horror movie Hellraiser — but after chancing upon a sticker that read ‘Read More Books’ at the Los Angeles Library, he found himself curating a more considered statement.

“There’s a huge movement in LA at the moment around physical media’s re-emergence,” says Aguilera, who has grown tired of the limited film content available via digital streaming platforms like Netflix. “Being in a big metropolitan city that still has video stores, I went back to renting films. And that was so important to me that I started sticker-ing those locations that I have been spending time at, like [video store] Videotheque, revival cinema Vidiots, and the Physical Media Society, who do screenings on 16mm.”

“The stickers,” he concludes, “felt like a way to present myself to the world — and also advertise a bit, like ‘hey, check out this stuff that’s out there’.” ‘Professional or Academic Identity’ is one of the five semiotic categories of laptop decorations defined by University of Baltimore professor Jeffrey Ian Ross in his 2025 article ‘The Semiotics of Laptop Computer Covers’. And in Hollywood, Aguilera’s logos from movie-focused businesses might also serve as a subtle networking tool or credibility marker.

The same could be said of 32-year-old Siobhan Bailey Turner’s display, which signposts her support for UK conservation group Project Seagrass and Brazil’s Projeto Onças do Iguaçu. “I was in Brazil a few years ago, jaguar collaring with the WWF,” says Turner, a Celebrity Relations lead at the latter organisation. “I love my job and have always been passionate about climate and nature in general.”

"Laptop stickers are a way to present yourself to the world — and also advertise your hobbies a bit"

Formerly a hot-desking freelancer, Turner spent years bouncing around coffee shops in places like London’s Broadway Market. Her current laptop still hints at a vast map of movements via stickers from Allpress, Minor Figures, and Roly Poly. “I love coffee. I’m an addict,” she says. “But I also value those experiences of coffee shops. Working within those spaces is inspirational, I find. The noise and the buzz takes me away, and allows me to be creative and concentrate.”

Her display, then, also fulfils another motive highlighted in Johnson’s research: the commemoration of places travelled. Turner’s laptop footprint spans Kernow in the UK's Cornwall, Majorca’s Hotel Corazon, and the American State of Montana. “Montana became prevalent last year when I flew out to go on my first date with my boyfriend,” says Turner, who collected the associated stickers on that very first trip. There’s comfort in keeping those memories close: “picking up my laptop, I can go, ‘oh, there’s my boyfriend’, or ‘there’s beautiful Montana’, and it brings me back to those moments. It feels important to carry these places and reminders with me in some way.”

Whatever the style or format, it’s evident that these sticker-adorned laptops have rich and often vibrant stories to tell about the user and the journeys they’ve undertaken. They also show how important it is to elevate visually imperfect devices, potentially through normalising their appearance in refurbished or second hand tech sales. Academic Johnson has come to appreciate the fascinating tales that laptop stickers tell: “They allow me to better connect with students,” she says, “because they let me know, through their stickers, what they’re interested in and who they are becoming.”

For many of the owners who spoke to me, these devices have also become dependable extensions of the self — or even cherished relics that they hesitate to part with, preserved as much for the memories embedded in their collages as for the devices themselves. At a time when sustainability matters more than ever, there are reasons beyond sentimentality to maintain and preserve these imperfect technologies. As we shape them in our own image, we also extend their life, reduce waste, and ensure that the stories they hold endure. Like the car bumpers that came before them, these sticker-filled laptops have clearly been places — and in many cases, still have many “lives” yet to live.