Exploring the Pop Culture Appeal of Vaporwave Stickers and Merchandise

Understanding Vaporwave Culture and Aesthetics

Vaporwave is a genre of electronic music and an aesthetic movement that emerged in the early 2010s. The vaporwave style is often associated with retro computer graphics, late 20th century consumer culture and advertising, and ironic New Age tropes. This has made vaporwave popular for stickers and other merchandise.

The Origins of Vaporwave Music

The vaporwave musical genre developed online in the early 2010s. The style features chopped and screwed samples from pop, rock, and dance songs from the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. This gives vaporwave music a distinctly retro feeling that is often described as nostalgic or surreal.

Vaporwave musicians and producers take musical snippets from older songs and manipulate them using effects like slowing down tempos, adding reverb, chopping up different parts, and looping certain segments. This creates a dreamy, atmospheric sound.

The Vaporwave Visual Aesthetic

Along with its distinct sound, vaporwave has a very specific visual aesthetic. Many vaporwave artworks feature 3D rendered images of corporate office spaces, shopping malls, computer operating systems, and screenshots of early internet and video game graphics.

Statues, Japanese language characters, and tropical landscapes also commonly appear. The colors are usually pastel or neon, with a preference for pink, teal, and purple. This style gives vaporwave art a distinctly 80s and 90s look and feel.

Why Vaporwave Became Popular

Vaporwave emerged as a rejection of consumer capitalism and economic recession in the early 2010s. By romanticizing products and aesthetics from previous decades, the vaporwave movement taps into nostalgia for more prosperous economic times.

At the same time, vaporwave reveals the artificiality of consumer culture by manipulating recognizable audio snippets and graphics into surreal combinations. This pushes listeners to question branding and advertising norms.

Vaporwave in Modern Culture

Thanks to its avant-garde counterculture leanings and distinctive retro-futuristic aesthetics, vaporwave eventually gained mainstream momentum. As more people discovered the genre, vaporwave made its way onto t-shirts, phone cases, posters, stickers, and other accessories.

Vaporwave Fashion

In addition to vaporwave merchandise, clothing brands have also incorporated vaporwave visual styles into some of their designs. This includes patterned button downs mimicking early internet graphics, dresses with abstract Asian statuary prints, and jackets sporting pop art flames.

Some fast fashion retailers like Zaful even sell premade vaporwave costumes. These outfits allow wearers to cosplay the musical genre by donning color blocked windbreakers, 3D rendered sunglasses, and atmospheric print leggings.

Vaporwave in Gaming

Vaporwave styles have also impacted video game graphics and soundtracks. Indie games like VA-11 HALL-A feature neon lighting, cyberpunk bar interiors, and synth wave scores directly inspired by musical vaporwave.

In the popular battle royale shooter Fortnite, the Cube Assassin skin lets players control a pink-haired anime character wielding a giant neon axe. This vibrant flashy aesthetic references vaporwave design.

The Appeal of Vaporwave Stickers

Stickers make up a sizable portion of vaporwave merchandise. Their colorful eye-catching graphics and adaptability to various surfaces hold unique appeal.

Unique and Diverse Design Options

Vaporwave stickers come in all shapes, sizes, and designs. Small circular stickers feature tropical plants, seashells, and marble busts. Large rectangular holographic stickers display marble Greek statues against pastel pink backgrounds.

Some vaporwave stickers have simple line art graphics of empty cityscapes. Others depict surreal avocados with laser eyes floating through space. This diversity makes vaporwave stickers fun to collect and trade.

Customization Potential

Die-cut stickers with unique contours align perfectly when placing them carefully. This allows creators to decorate boring surfaces in interesting arrangements. The versatility of stickers means they easily adhere to laptops, water bottles, phone cases, guitars, skateboards, cars, and more.

Layering stickers on different angles layered on top of each other multiplies customization possibilities. Large sticker packs with different vaporwave designs encourage experimenting with various color combinations, textures, and sticker sizes.

Affordable Art Objects

Unlike most other vaporwave art pieces like original paintings, custom clothing, or sculpture, stickers remain inexpensive to produce. This makes vaporwave stickers both readily accessible and highly collectible.

The affordability of stickers as an art medium also aligns well with vaporwave’s anti establishment leanings. Stickers allow the style to spread quickly through peer to peer trading rather than exclusively existing in elite formalized art spaces.

Vaporwave stickers offer flexibility both physically in their application, and conceptually as an affordable high-impact art object. This versatility helps explain the enduring popularity of vaporwave vinyls and stickers in underground online communities.

FAQs

What materials are vaporwave stickers made out of?

Vaporwave stickers come in a range of materials like matte vinyl, glossy vinyl, holographic vinyl, transparent vinyl, and even waterproof varieties. Matte and glossy vinyl vaporwave stickers tend to be the most affordable and common.

Where can I buy vaporwave stickers?

Vaporwave stickers are available from various online retailers like Redbubble, Etsy, and eBay. Interested buyers can search for terms like “vaporwave stickers” or “aesthetic stickers” to find many retro-style options.

What are some vaporwave sticker ideas?

Some popular vaporwave sticker ideas include pink and teal gradients, marble statues, 3D rendered tropical plants, seashells and flamingos, Windows 95 operating graphics, kanji characters, and ironic corporate catchphrases.

What can I stick vaporwave stickers onto?

Vaporwave stickers easily adhere to smooth, clean surfaces like laptops, phone cases, water bottles, guitars, skateboards, cars, notebooks, and more. Their versatility makes them very customizable.

Can I design my own vaporwave stickers?

Yes! Many online printing companies offer custom sticker printing where buyers can upload their own designs. After designing a sticker with vaporwave-style graphics, customize the shape, size, and quantity to order.