Our Mario Post-it Mural

The latest Mario game has landed and made a massive impact worldwide, not to mention in our office! Our office is filled with gamers, so we noticed several people using their Nintendo Switches at lunch to explore the worlds of Mario Odyssey. Some of our employees thought we should take our love for Nintendo to the next level, just as we did with our Star Wars fans in the run-up to The Force Awakens, meaning we had our next big art project on our hands!

We took to our employee games room with a pile of Post-it notes to create our very own Mario tribute by recreating the iconic level 1-1 from the original Super Mario Bros.

How we made our Post-it mural

Planning

This is our games room, filled with games for employees to unwind with during their lunch break or at the end of the week. To create our mural, we needed as much space as we could find, so we measured up not one, not two, but three of our walls to plan out our Post-it note level.

As each Post-it is 3×3 inches large, we found each of our walls would need columns 31 notes high. Our largest wall stretched 85 notes wide, meaning we needed 2,635 notes just for starters! With two more walls, and a doorway to decorate around, we used an incredible 6,223 notes for our project.

Design

Gamers all over the world recognise the opening level from Super Mario Bros. so we wanted to recreate the level as accurately as possible. While Mario has been rendered in full-scale glory, we simplified the rest of the level to fit more of it onto our walls.

With our designs ready, we took to our games room and marked up the walls with guidelines to keep everything straight. The whole mural was split into nine sections, and we enlisted a little help from other office workers to get things underway!

Creation

With Post-it notes in-hand and walls marked up, we set to building the mural. Each person started with their very top row, to ensure everything was kept straight as people worked through their sections. It took a team of 10 of us seven hours to create the mural, with everyone chipping in to help with other people’s areas whenever they could.

One member of the team even brought in a Nintendo Entertainment System so we could enjoy some 8-bit, side-scrolling action while surrounded by the beautiful mural.

We had a blast creating our Post-it note artwork, but there were a few difficulties along the way you should keep in mind if you want to create your own.

• Make sure the surfaces you’re sticking to are nice and clean before you start. Be careful what substances you clean with, as well, as some products can create a film that can make the notes hard to stick to.
• The stickiness of your notes can also be affected by the room’s temperature. If things are too warm, you’ll find them falling down (as we did from time to time!) so try to keep things as cool as possible without opening any windows.
• Post-it note projects can take a long time to complete (especially with so much blue sky to fill in) so make sure you have some music on to keep spirits high while you’re building.

And that’s how we created our massive Mario mural! If you have your own Post-it note creations, big or small, share them with us on Twitter at @viking_chat!