These “Not Available On The App Store” Stickers Are the Cutest Way to Make an Excellent Point - There’s a Life Outside Our Smartphones
Some things just can't be done with a click.
Not every protest needs a megaphone, sometimes a sticker does the job just fine. That is the idea behind “Not Available on the App Store,” a playful project from three Swedish digital media students that takes aim at how glued we have become to our screens.
Rafael Ochoa, Caio Andrade, and Linn Livijn Wexell created stickers that mimic Apple’s familiar App Store badge, turning a familiar symbol into a reminder that real life is still happening offline. Their campaign is simple, cheeky, and a little pointed, which is exactly why it stands out.
Their message is hard to miss, and the photos make it even clearer.
1. “Not Available on the App Store” is an idea devised by three Swedish digital media students, Rafael Ochoa, Caio Andrade, and Linn Livijn Wexell.
Technabob2. They have created these stickers imitating the well-known Apple “Available on the App Store” badge.
Technabob3. It’s undoubtedly a clever guerrilla art initiative.
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4. Its aim is to make us realize there’s a real life outside social media, smartphones, and computers.
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The Apple App Store is a digital delivery platform where people can purchase and download software and apps. Apps bought from the Apple App Store are kept in iCloud, Apple's cloud service, for easy access from any signed-in device.
Even though Apple maintains that it holds a trademark on the phrase "app store," it is used to describe any platform where apps are sold. The most famous are Google's Google Play, the Amazon Appstore, Blackberry World, and Microsoft's Windows Store.
That familiar logo is doing a lot of work here.
5. There isn’t an app for absolutely everything
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The Apple App Store opened on July 10, 2008, the day before the launch of the iPhone 3G. It is a significant business for the company, with gross sales of around $50 billion in 2019.
It became a synonym for a public software marketplace, and we are sure that the young students didn’t intend to call out just this platform. They probably chose the App Store logo for their provocative campaign because it’s the most famous one.
It is a familiar symbol, which makes the joke land faster.
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There is a life outside the virtual world, and even though it can be extremely interesting and cozy, it is no substitute for real-life experiences. Unfortunately, we tend to forget this sometimes.
Of course, we didn’t have much choice in the past few years, and we were forced to move our lives and work online. But we shouldn’t accept this “new normal” as a must forever. Instead, it should be just a phase that teaches us to value real human contact and real life.
And that is the point these stickers keep making.
Before you hit send, see why “Sent from my iPhone” sparks debate in email etiquette.
