Reference & Inspiration

I spent several hours surfing through pinterest and instagram, looking for stickers, graphic design ideas, and retro sci-fi rocketship art (because I've been on something of a space kick, lately). This is some of what I found:

 

I also spent some time looking for retro-ish colour pallets, and found these:

I used the last one – or, at least, something close to it in the Pantone family.

Favourite StickerApp Sticker

To be honest, finding a favourite sticker on StickerApp was hard mainly because I really didn't like most of them. The style of art used in most of the stickers there isn't to my taste. Neither was the subject matter, in many cases. (I can live far more happily without troll faces and porn, thanks.)

Eventually, though, I came across a cute little Groot sticker I liked. I'm pretty sure the best part of the GotG 2 movie was the first 15 minutes of the film – Groot's 15 minutes of fame, so to speak. So, I went with it.

Rough Sketches

I started with some thumbnail mock-ups in Photoshop. None of them took me more than 5 or 10 minutes to do, being simple shapes and filled sketches. 

I eventually selected the 5th one, "To Infinity...", because I liked the rocket.

Final Design

I modified the design somewhat as I went along, borrowing elements from some of the others, and finally came out with this:

I've ordered a set of stickers from StickerApp to see how they turn out. I tried to put a mirror/foil effect behind the central galaxy, just for fun. When they come in, if they're any good, I'll post a final photo of them here.

UPDATE:

The stickers have arrived. They're seriously cool. The foil effect worked.