StickerBox: How to Make a Sticker App for iPhone

Trying to communicate without stickers in messenger apps or on social networks seems unthinkable these days, and even in business correspondence, they are becoming the norm. At the same time, using stickers has its own trends and etiquette. While some images are becoming fashionable, others are losing relevance, and sending an inappropriate sticker to a group chat is like making a bad joke at a party.

With stickers being so popular, it’s no surprise that a lot of people are interested in how to create a sticker app. People want to surprise friends and acquaintances with stickers they’ve created themselves.

Fortunately, you can design stickers based on your own ideas and imagination. StickerBox is the app that makes this possible.

So what is a sticker app?

We will look at the concept of a sticker app with the help of StickerBox, one of our products. StickerBox is an awesome tool for creating stickers based on your photos. Designed to be easy to use, it includes a huge selection of templates for your sticker creations.

Our app puts you into all kinds of situations: here you are dancing at a disco in the late 70s, there you are holding an armful of kittens, and now you are throwing green wads of cash over your head. These stickers can be integrated into Telegram, WhatsApp and any other messenger app. Whatever you come up with, StickerBox gives perfect life to your inspirations.

It's just what you need if you:

• Want to stand out in chats with your friends and colleagues
• Have always wanted to express yourself—not just with words but visually too
• Are just bored to tears with the stickers offered by your messenger apps
• Just want to have some fun

How it works

It only takes a few clicks to use the StickerBox app. You just download the app, open it, take a selfie or choose a photo from your gallery, and then StickerBox automatically selects the best template for you. And if the selected template isn’t right for you, many more are available. All you have to do is choose the one you like!

These are the key features that make the StickerBox so unique:

• Effortless and fast creation of stickers, with no unnecessary actions
• A nearly endless selection of sticker templates at absolutely no cost
• You can send your new stickers to any messenger app with just one click, without leaving the app.
• All the stickers you create are saved in the app, building your own personal sticker pack.

Why StickerBox?

We all need some magic, and we like it to work simply, quickly and with the least amount of effort. StickerBox combines fantastic ease of use with high-quality results.

Our team worked hard to ensure we used no ordinary processing algorithm. Instead, we used a computer vision algorithm that could process photos with incredible accuracy, producing beautiful stickers that you’ll definitely want to share with your friends.

Based on neuro programming, the app carefully cuts your face out of the photo, automatically selects various template options, and then carefully inserts your face into those templates. All you have to do is choose the one you like. Isn't it magic?

Team

To complete the project, we needed five specialists:

• IOS Developer
• Backend Developer
• Designer
• Product manager
• Chief technology officer

Timeframe

The first version of StickerBox was launched in April 2017, and then it went through various changes and updates. Our team tested the app in many different ways and made various edits. In all, the app development process took our team about three months.

Challenges and Solutions

In developing StickerBox, ease of use was a major priority for our team.

The first step was to develop an app that could carefully cut out the face area from a photo. Since it would be a long and difficult task to do this manually, our team made sure the app could do it on its own. The main difficulty was for the algorithm to focus on a uniform color and cut only those parts that exactly fit the color requirements.

But we all know that face color is not uniform. Some parts are covered with shadows, some are in the light, and there are many other factors that ordinary algorithms wouldn't be able to take into account. Therefore, our team decided to follow the path of machine learning and neural networks so that our application could separate a face from its background as well as a person could. This approach gave us the results we wanted and allowed us to release StickerBox to the public—an app that creates perfect stickers.

Another critical point was that initially, the app worked only half automatically. It cut the face area out from the photo, but you had to insert the face into the template yourself, which significantly increased the time to create stickers.

Our job was to fix this problem. We wanted to make both processes automatic and accurate—the process of cutting out the face from photos and the further process of fitting the face into the template. This would make the entire process of creating a sticker autonomous. We successfully implemented this.

What we have now

Today, we are happy to have a product that fully reflects our philosophy about the interfaces: "The best interface is no interface." Minimum actions with maximum pleasure from the creative process.

Our app works perfectly now, and is available for AppStore users. Its entire interface is controlled by just a single button, and its computer vision algorithm expertly removes a face from a photo and inserts it into a template. Another nice thing about the app is that it can share the result with your friends with a single click and in any messenger app.

Plans

StickerBox is currently the top app of its kind, but even the best apps need to be polished and updated. StickerBox will be no exception to this. Our team has plans to make this app's functionality even wider.

For example, we update the template database on a weekly basis, adding some new and trending sticker templates so that our users' stickers will be not only beautiful and funny, but also up-to-date. We all want to keep up with trends, don't we?

We are also thinking about creating a kind of marketplace for stickers and sticker packs, where users can upload their work and share it with other users. This will allow StickerBox users to share their creations not only with their friends, but also with other users. This will inspire their ideas as they see interesting and creative stickers from others.

Conclusion

We live in a world where everything is developing at incredible speed. The flow of information is so vast that we just want to reduce and simplify everything to save time and effort. StickerBox handles its task in the best possible way, helping our audience to express themselves and their emotions brightly, humorously, creatively and most importantly—quickly and easily.

Whether you are an emotional person or quiet person, a rock star or an office worker, there’ll be something in our sticker templates that will appeal to you. Why? Because there's such a great choice!

We are always happy to help you express yourself, and with the StickerBox app, expressing yourself is so much easier and enjoyable.