When I went to the Post Office last week, the postal clerk kindly informed me that the cost of mailing a letter will go up on August 29th. Instead of a stamp costing 55 cents, a stamp will go for 58 cents. She suggested that I should stock up on Forever stamps.
I don’t really use many stamps these days since I pay most bills online, but new stamps and their designs fascinate me. Who selects what appears on a stamp? Who designs a stamp? What is the process?
When I researched the topic, I did find out some interesting things. About the only thing I knew beforehand is that any person depicted on a stamp has to have died a few years before. I learned that the exact number is three.
It sometimes takes more than five years to design a postage stamp. There may be as many as 100 different drafts of a stamp concept from the beginning sketches to the final product.
The Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee meets “confidentially” four times a year to evaluate stamp ideas suggested by the public. The committee then forwards its decision about a particular concept to the Postmaster General. Following his approval, the project to bring the idea to fruition is assigned to one of four art directors nationwide.
Since the U.S. Postal Service is privately run, but chartered by Congress to serve the public, taxpayer money does not go to support it. The funds necessary for its operation come from the sale of products (stamps, for instance) and various shipping services.
Antonio Alcalá (MFA, Graphic Arts, Yale University) is one of the four art directors for the USPS. Mr. Alcalá says that inspiration may come in random locations at random moments. When he was at the Chicago Midway Airport a few years ago, he was intrigued by a certain U.S. flag, waving back and forth in the breeze. He later turned that image into the stamp commonly in use today. See the image in the collage above.
Because I sometimes order stamps online, I am on the mailing list for the USPS stamp catalogues as soon as they are published. After the clerk told me that I should stock up on Forever stamps, I took a better look at the catalogue we had at home. One new stamp of shapes that came out on July 14th especially caught my eye because it contains a mystery message.
Mr. Alcalá designed it because of the public’s appreciation for games and riddles. The message repeats on the pane of stamps. Each stamp contains the same message in full. Take a closer look. Here are some clues:
- There are five words in the message.
- The words wrap around from line to line, always going from left to right.
- The first letter of the message is M. It is located in the upper left-hand corner of the stamp. The message ends in the lower right-hand corner of the stamp with an exclamation point.
- It’s a phrase, not a sentence, that most people would recognize.
If you want to check out your answer or if you really want to know the solution without using a lot of brainpower, click here. You will have to scroll down a bit to read the answer. You can also go over to the Post Office, invest in a sheet of those Forever stamps, and then look at the back where the solution is clearly revealed.