This Friday marks National Sticker Day, an annual celebration of one of the most fun, cheap, and easy-to-produce forms of artistic expression.

Spend long enough wandering around any major city across the world, and you will notice a plethora of stickers.

Whether they are plastered on street signs and the bench of a bus stop or covering walls from ceiling to floor in the bathroom of your local dive bar, you can pretty much find stickers anywhere.

People from all walks of life make stickers for various reasons: they can be used to market products, share ideas, promote art, or simply decorate a blank space.

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Everyone from businessmen to political activists have used stickers to share something in the world.

National Sticker Day presents the perfect occasion to celebrate the quirky art form by making a sticker of your own and sticking it around your town and local haunts.

Dictionary.com defines a sticker as "an adhesive label or notice, generally printed or illustrated."

The exact history of the sticker is a bit complicated, as the invention and use of the first sticker has long been up for debate.

According to Maverick Label, a printing company that operates out of Washington state, the ancient Egyptians are believed by some to have first used "stickers" to advertise rates in markets. Archeologists have found slips of paper that contained prices and descriptions that were somehow pasted on city walls.

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In 1839, Sir Rowland Hill created what has come to be known as the first-ever postage stamp, which some argue was actually the first sticker.

Another theory involves a heated competition between various European advertising gurus in the 1880s who began using bright, colorful labels to distinguish their products from their competitors.

Finally, many attribute the creation of the first sticker as we know it to Ray Stanton Avery, the businessman behind Avery Labels. The inventor created the first sticker that could be applied using pressure, as opposed to moisture like stickers before it, in 1935. Avery's birthday falls on January 13, and we now use it to celebrate his notorious contribution to art.

Stickers have become the easiest to produce and apply methods of spreading just about any kind of thought or idea.

So what's the deal? What would possess someone to go through the trouble of getting an idea or illustration printed on some sort of adhesive paper, and paste it on a seemingly random surface?

Stickers are absolutely the best way to promote an idea or piece of art. They can be placed just about anywhere, and if you pick a good enough spot, it will be viewed by many for years to come.

They in all sorts of shapes, sizes, colors, and designs. There are literally no rules when it comes to what kind of sticker you want to make, or what kind of message you want it to convey.

Some people produce stickers to promote their business or even a creative project like a band.

Artists can use them to market their work, and activists have used them for years to push their organization and relevant ideologies.

The sky is truly the limit.

Stickers are incredibly easy to make, cheap to produce, and applying them is a piece of cake.

There are a ton of services on the internet that can make the entire process super simple for you.

Companies like Sticker Ninja or Sticker Mule make the process super simple by allowing you to send in a custom design fo your choosing to be printed, which they will return a mockup to you for your approval.

Then, in a matter of days, you can get a ton of stickers through the mail that you can paste all over your town.

You can paste them somewhere for your eyes to see them on a regular basis, or use them to bring life to an otherwise dead, blank space.

If you do decide you want to put your sticker up in a public space for many eyes to see, beware of any legal issues you might face for getting caught.

Fortunately, the act of putting up a sticker is quick and easy, but it's also seen as a form of vandalism in many public spaces.

Keep an eye out for spots that are already shamelessly covered in stickers, and paste it there. Or even better – give your creation to a friend or random person for them to enjoy.

Whatever you decide to put on a sticker, make it mean something special to you. This way, whenever you or others see it, the sticker can brighten your day!