In my last post on my color scheme, I focussed on The Cubicle. I mentioned but didn’t really discuss The Cube Specialists. This video showcases my sticker collection and organization and highlights the excellent stickers from the Cube Specialists:
The Cube Specialists
My Custom Color Scheme
I get a lot of questions about my color scheme, especially related to the gray U face. I typically sticker white puzzles with full-brights for the “sides” (F, R, B, L), gray for U, and black for D.
I first got the idea from a video by Teal Cubes showing his custom color scheme — blue opposite green, gray opposite white, and pink opposite yellow. The video makes a compelling demonstration that there are schemes better than the 1980s Rubik’s one that most of us use without much further thought. That said, I don’t like pink stickers, and it would have been far too jarring to make three color changes at once. So, I adopted simpler changes.
When I previously wrote about my color scheme, I didn’t really get into the philosophy behind it and deferred exploring particular shades. Time to do that now:
Custom Logo Stickers — Izo / Puzzle Addictions
If you’ve followed this blog at all, you’ll know that I’ve spent a fair bit of time looking for vendors that could print custom logo stickers (for branded center stickers). As my logo grew more refined and intricate, so did my expectations from vendors.
The logo started as a monochrome/grayscale simple stylized G that I printed on my laser printer. I eventually had a sheet of that logo printed, as I described in my first sticker post. From there, the logo evolved into a G on a colored background resembling a scrambled cube, the letter setoff by a white stroke. I eventually discovered oliverstickers.com, which is run by Olivér Nagy, a really nice guy from Budapest who prints stickers for a lot of European cubers. He printed me a good amount of stock in that logo at great prices; as I blogged about those stickers, the stock quality was good and full-color printing was sharp enough. There was slight pixelation, but only up-close; from a normal distance, they look great. The pricing was excellent (about $13 to my door), and they arrived within two weeks of ordering, even with shipping from Hungary. Here’s a link to the logo section of his shop. When I developed my new logo sting for my videos, the logo evolved once more — adding a drop shadow, a reflection/glare, and a bit more refinement to the G’s size and placement.
I was about to place another order with Olivér, when Bradley (Izo) of puzzleaddictions.com, knowing I was looking for a domestic sticker printer, made me some test stickers. They’re terrific: