Something that has been around for a while is protecting our beloved gadget from scratches and skin it with custom designs.   It’s an ongoing trend especially for the fashionable techie.  Even Apple celebrity Steve Jobs has his own iPhone 4 case bling made with Swarovski crystals where the entire case costs $299.  Or if you’re the bigger spender, you can bask in a $50,000 18-carat gold iPhone case from Sukar.com with approximately 1,100 hand-laid diamonds.   For the true blue designer though, we want something that is more personal, represents our lifestyle and more importantly, within budget.  I found 9 online tools to get you started uploading your designs and turn them into fashionable skins for your phones, laptops, mp3 players and gaming gadgets.

Design your Gadget and Skin it with 9 Online Tools

1. Skinit

Skinit is a popular site for gadget skinning for their huge collection of designs with partner sites for a wide variety of gadgets. The Skinit Customizer with its sleek, user-friendly interface, lets you choose from their image library or upload your own design or photo directly to the customizer where you can scale it further, rotate and add text aftwards.

2. Infectious

If you love your gadget and want to skin it with the most unique retro vector designs, then Infectious is the right place.   This is also home of the famous VHS Heroes skin by Hollis Brown Thornton.  Aside from gadgets, they also have designs for t-shirts, wall decals, car decals and skateboards.   I tried out their online skin editor for iPhone 3GS.  Although they can fully skin the back of the device, the front lets you skin the bottom only.  Not bad still though, if you choose or create the right design that will stand out at the bottom part and keep everything else plain.  Aside from their design gallery, they are also a community where you can submit designs, receive critique and vote for designs.  They hold monthly design contests where you can win cash and meet a lot of great artists.

3. GelaSkins

GelaSkins is known for their beautiful artwork on gadget skins from known digital painters.  They add a page on their site where they feature the artist behind the artwork with the artist’s background and image gallery.  It seems like a pretty nice tribute for the hard work done by these artists.  Other than their pre-made designs, GelaSkins also allows you to skin it and create your own skins with an option to watch the video tutorial upon start up.  Although the interface is not as attractive as that of Infectious and Skinit, its got a lot of design options like customizing the screen wallpaper and custom text with URL to include upon packaging your GelaSkin.

4. JamSkin

JamSkin makes use of materials from SkinJam where you might have noticed their stores in the mall.  Their design collection are mostly simple but colorful patterns. But if you want to have more than that, you can create your own using the JamSkin online editor.  Now what I appreciate about skinning the gadget using this editor is that the design goes continuously all the way on the front from top to bottom, including the screen wallpaper.  So the design looks connected all together… NICE :)

5. Schtickers

Other than making designs for Apple products and laptops, they will also have upcoming Wall Schticker designs for blackboard, whiteboard and fabric.   Other than pampering your gadgets, this is also perfect if you want to design your kid’s walls with colorful sticker designs.  Their site looks promising as theyre working on building a community where people can submit their designs, participate in contests and vote for their favorites.  If you want to stay ahead before the community page opens, you can design your gadget and skin it using the Schtickers online skin editor.

6. Wrappz

Designs coming from Wrappz have a lot of slightly manipulated photographs of iconic people like Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley.  Their online skinning tool is pretty straightforward but there is live help available at the top right of the app if you need to call for help anytime.  All designs can be printed on canvass as well as gadgets.

7. Avery Brand and Print

This site is more targeted to the business entrepreneur who would like to have photo binders, ring binders, business cards and cd/dvd labels customized with their brand identity.  They also do gadgets and laptops as well.  This is also for you if you have a fast computer due to its slow image loading time on the skinning tool with their high resolution designs and photos in their database.  The shapes available to add to your designs are basic but you can style them with colored strokes and adjusted thickness that can give you a lot of options for design freedom.

8. LeftSkins

The LeftSkins Design Tool is the only one I found where you can scale your design and choose whether or not to maintain its proportions.  So, it means if you drag the corner of your image all the way to the right, it will stretch horizontally.  The front of the iPhone skin will be fully covered except for the home button and LCD screen.  Unlike Avery Brand & Print, LeftSkins has a HUGE collection of clipart that they added a search feature that will take you to pages of clipart options per keyword.

9. iaPeel

iaPeel is somewhat an online and offline tool in designing your gadget to skin it.  They have an iaPeel Skin Maker with available free templates to have them printed by you on an inkjet printer.  You can see a demo video on how to print on them.  But the ticket for you to access their software is if you buy one of the available designs in their gallery, then you are given a serial number to download the software.  It’s just a way for them to earn for themselves for the work done to create the software and free templates.

So whether you have an iPhone, a laptop or an XBox, you can skin it with your own design and give it some attitude.  It’s made with durable, automotive-grade 3M™ Vinyl for easy application and residue-free removal.  The price ranges from 12 to 39 dollars for each design depending on your gadget.  Free your gadget from the conventional look and design anything from fractal abstracts, vector design, or your favorite celebrities.  Even a picture of your sweetheart all over your gadget would be enough.  Now wouldn’t that be personal? ;)

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