My first ambition was to make a pair of stickers to cover the backside and the frontside of iPod nano as precisely as possible. I looked at how GelaSkins did it and improved what i did not like so much about the way they cut the stickers (besides that - their selection artworks is truly stunning. How about a piece by Claude Monet?!).

A perfect fit did not however feel like the best solution. Here is why:

• Despite a glossy lamination, the sticker surface turned iPod Nano into kitchenware. The slightly gum-like feeling of a sticker is just something else than anodized aluminium. Reason enough to not cover the frontside.
• The haptic sensation of using the Click Wheel is not as smooth when it is covered with a sticker.
• When most of iPod nano is covered, an uncovered display looks like a bad joke, considering that the sticker should also serve to avoid scratches. Providing an extra clear see-through film seemed too much of fiddling around.
• Because of a precise cut, aligning the stickers exactly is difficult. Nobody can be expected to have a go at applying them 50 times until they are aligned properly. Stickers i make for iPod shuffle 1st generation are meant to fully cover the device, but there are intentional margins. For iPod nano, such margins didn't look good.

In sum, the super-precise, super-streamlined version seemed too stilted, too fabricated, too phony. I figure that the simple, backside-only concept is the way to go:

Related entry: New designs: 26 for Nano, 15 for Shuffle

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