The Design of Stamps: Expression in a Square Mile

Born in the early 1840s, the nearly two-hundred-year history of stamps has bred a rich variety of forms and important values. Because of their small size, the design of stamps plays an important role. Since their introduction, the designs on stamps have fallen into four main categories: busts, emblems, numerals, and patterns. With the development of the times, more and more artists and designers are paying attention to stamp design and injecting fresh blood into it.

When stamps are sent out with letters, a set of stamps with great local characteristics may be a more appropriate choice. Greece has always been a global tourist destination, where natural beauty and human history mingle. Designer Mike Karolos uses an abstract, colorful style to bring together iconic Greek elements on a set of stamps: islands, ancient artifacts, landmarks, beaches, blue and white houses, and more. As the stamps with these motifs are mailed out in the mail, the character of Greece spreads with them.

In addition to Greece, designer Cris Ruiz created a set of stamps for the southern Mexican state of Tabasco that reflects its rich nature, unique culture, and tantalizing cuisine. The stamps feature the most distinctive elements of Tabasco in warm, fresh orange, pink, and cream colors, and show the state's cheerfulness, warmth, and friendliness.

"Manx Folk Traditions" is a set of stamps commemorating local winter and autumn customs in the Isle of Man. Inspired by Celtic and Norse wood and stone carvings, the stamps feature scenes of Manx people playing musical instruments and dancing in circles, cleaning and shopping for festive items during the autumn and winter months, as well as small figures dressed in traditional Manx costumes. The designer uses a vivid painting style and festive colors to bring to life the lively traditional customs of the Isle of Man.

In addition to designing a set of stamps for a single place, Makers Design has created a set of stamps called "Town Square", where the most famous sights or images from such prestigious destinations as Milan, Miami and Brazil are extracted and designed to form a set. The stamps are unified in style and have their own highlights.

Stamps are always meant to be commemorative and memorable, and many designers design stamps with things they think are worth remembering. Designer Gökçe Yigit believes that humans are transient, but animals are eternal, so when she was walking through the streets of Africa, she decided to create a series of "eternal stamps" for the animals of Africa. She placed elephants, cheetahs, rhinoceroses, lions, zebras, and other animals that live on the African savannah on different backgrounds, and these animals were framed in their most dynamic and active state, making the stamps a truly timeless record of these moments.

There is also a group of stamps showing telephones of various periods, from the magnetic telephone, to the rotary dial automatic telephone, to today's fully electronic automatic telephones and hand-held smartphones, with their corresponding years. Designed by Muhammed Sajid, this set of stamps, titled "Commemorating the Evolution of the Telephone," marks all types of telephones since their inception. It also illustrates the many ways in which stamps can commemorate history.

There are also stamps that were born out of the designer's love of a particular story. One of designer Roy Vu's favorite games as a child was Age of Empires: The Conquerors. Out of his love for the game, Roy began to study the history behind the game's prototype at a young age, and after becoming a designer, Roy drew vivid three-dimensional images of each character based on the game's content and that glorious history, and used them as the design for a set of stamps. Through the drawing and production of the square inch, the character and encounter of each character are embodied to the fullest, and also form a wonderful story.

"Game of Thrones" is a popular TV series, and the designer (Nazlıcan Turan) designed a set of stamps for it. The design features several castles and famous terrains that appear frequently in "Game of Thrones", as well as "The Wall", the most important feature of the show. The designer drew these images in the stamps to make it seem as if the letter came from the castle.

The design of the seal: an exclusive mark

Nowadays, the fast-paced life brought by the convenient network covers almost all of us, and electronic communication has become the most important channel for everyone's daily communication, while heavy, textured seals with a personal mark or engraved with a story rarely appear in life anymore. But when you receive a letter or an invitation with an exclusive seal, you are sure to be attracted by its unique sense of story and solemnity.

Displaying a distinctive personal or brand identity is almost the most important attribute and function of a seal, and many people design their own seals with the brand name or their own name as the subject of the seal design. A seal. The word "empty" is widely used in Chinese characters, "space," "blank," "emptiness," and "void. ...... These words all imply the philosophy of space, which perfectly explains the studio's design concept and original intention, and Kevin He applied it to the design of the "empty" seal. The main body of the seal is made of pure white, and the design of the font combines squareness and roundness, presenting the designer's philosophy of space in a small space.

The exclusive seal of the video game startup Ride&Crash is the only content of the seal with the words "ride" and "crash" enlarged. The design incorporates the meaning of the company's name, with the words "ride" and "crash" representing the characteristics of the two founders of the company and implying opposing meanings. So the designer designed the seal by removing the lower part of "ride" and presenting it in blue, and removing the upper part of "crash" and presenting it in red. The two parts are like two pieces of a puzzle, but also have a distinction between fire and ice.

The seal of Jacqueline Fleury's tailor's store is designed to combine her name with elements typical of her work. Jacqueline Fleury is a talented seamstress, and the designer created a seal that echoes the style of Jacqueline, who specializes in vintage-inspired clothing. At the center of the design is a pair of scissors opened in the shape of an "X", with a thimble above the scissors, a bundle of thread spools below, a "J" on the left and an "F" on the right. The simple and classic expression not only visually reflects Jacqueline Fleury's signature, but also clarifies her design style to consumers.

In addition to the brand name as the main seal, many others choose the image that best represents their brand to design their seals. Andaluz, a Brazilian audio and video production company, takes its name from the surrealist short film An Andalusian Dog, an experiment in non-linear filmmaking. To echo this creative concept, the designers fused a wooden horse with a horse's head to create the letter "A" and designed a seal representing the company's name, making the overall image very childlike and cinematic.

Similar to this is the famous Argentine restaurant Pimiento, which serves Argentine beef specialties on the grill. The designer used paper made in the most traditional way of printing and covered it with a fire-painted seal exclusive to the restaurant. The design on the seal is the one that best represents Pimiento - the cow and the cow's head. The texture of the design uses the most rustic cow pattern, expressing the natural and native state of the beef served at the restaurant.

And the design of the seal of the Polish National Park extracts the natural elements as the main body, expressing the concept of environmental protection and sustainability. The pattern design is inspired by the traditional Polish art of paper-cutting, which vividly presents images of trees, leaves, flowers and forests through paper-cutting. A variety of patterns represent various areas of the park, and visitors can collect the stamp patterns to record the paths they have visited. This fun-filled design not only makes the image of the Polish national park more vivid and vivid, but also stimulates visitors' desire to see it, and invariably promotes environmental awareness.

A Hong Kong-style dim sum restaurant in Hanoi, Vietnam, called Jiulong, has a "red lantern" seal. "The name of the restaurant is written in the red lantern, which not only directly indicates the name of the restaurant, but also visually reflects that the restaurant offers Chinese food, and provides a lively and festive mood for diners, which also attracts them to come.

In addition, many other brands choose to give a more ancient and traditional connotation to the seal with retro patterns. Mooncakes, as pastries celebrating traditional Chinese festivals, symbolize reunion. The seal design of Xiya mooncakes uses patterns full of auspicious and festive symbolism such as magpies, pine trees and auspicious clouds, combining the traditional rustic woodblock printing process with a simple and modern design style, harmonizing with the shape of the gift box and demonstrating the brand's addition of a touch of auspiciousness to traditional festivals.

If you receive an envelope with this seal, you will surely think you have received a letter from the sky with an ancient legend. The seal designed by Daniele Simonelli is inspired by the solar system, and he has mapped the sun's rays and the stars revolving around it on the seal. The golden fire paint adds to the ancient and mysterious appearance of the seal.

Major Tom's seal design reorganizes the classical art style with perfect geometric forms, creating a 16th century Roman motif. At the same time, the main body of the seal is made of heavy, vintage brass, and the color of the design is a brilliant and mysterious gold, giving both the main body of the seal and the engraved design a refined and elegant quality, expressing a retro design concept.

Article Source:艺术与设计

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