Post-it Art

In early 2013 I found myself on the receiving end of a break-up and a sudden abundance of free time on my hands along with a big white wall I wanted to make more interesting.

All my dollar-store art was still in storage in northern Europe and I was – at the time – in Tokyo, Japan. Having seen a bunch of post-it-based pixel art online I thought surely it couldn’t be too difficult to put something together myself…?

I was honestly surprised that I couldn’t find a short but comprehensive guide on creating your own post-it wall art. While this project isn’t the most arduous work I’ve ever undertaken, I still learned a lot over the 3 day weekend I spent piecing this together and thought I might as well share it with other budding artists.


Publication and resources


Quick Facts

  • 3 day project from conception to completion in 2013
  • Time spent placing every post-it totaled approximately 8 hours.
  • Approximately 1400 Post-its used.
  • Every post-it stayed in place – without additional adhesive – until the arts destruction in May 2015

Postmortem

Some lessons gleaned from completing the project.

  • Clean getaway – A massive advantage to this type of art is that it leaves the wall in near perfect condition, with perhaps a tiny bit of adhesive residue to clean off if we’re being extra nit-picky. While the project took approximately three 8-hour days to complete, it took less than 15 minutes to deconstruct.
  • Color Range – Originally, I was planning to find and purchase post-its with colors matching the image I wished to re-create. Unfortunately, I was unable to find any online sources within Japan from which I could order such colored post-its. Instead, I ended up ordering the entire color range of standard post-its available from Amazon.co.jp. It ended up giving the art a kind of acid color scheme.
  • Grid – If you have watched the ‘how-to’ video at the top of this page, you may have noticed I start out placing post-its within a smaller grid not covering the entire wall. I still don’t quite understand why I didn’t initially have the grid cover the entire wall. Don’t be dumb like me, and start out with a grid covering the entire area you intend to put post-its on.
  • Color Matching – I ended up just using my eyesight to match pixel colors to post-it colors. Although this ended up working out fine in the end, it undoubtedly made the whole process more time consuming and tedious. Is this pixel the darkest pink, or the almost darkest pink?! For optimal efficiency, I would recommend making every color very distinct on the pixelated guide image you create. That way, you’ll know exactly which color on the guide corresponds to which colored post-it.

Gallery