Machin Series - Colours

Colours

The most striking aspect of the Machins is the rainbow of colours. Since the designs are all identical (or nearly so), it was critical that each denomination be produced in an easily-distinguished colour. Worse, the likelihood of rate changes meant that additional colours would be necessary, since old stamps were still valid and could appear on mail.

The initial palette of 14 colours was chosen after extensive testing. While most were solid colours, the 1/6d and 1/9d used different colours for effigy and denomination, while the 10d and 1/- had backgrounds that varied from darker on the left side to lighter on the right. The dark olive-brown shade of the 4d value, the most often-used stamp of the time, was personally selected by the Queen as being the available colour most reminiscent of the Penny Black. However, in practice this proved difficult to distinguish from the 5d's dark blue, automated machinery could not always see the phosphor bands on the stamps, and even football pool organizers complained that it was too hard to read the date and time of cancellations. In 1969, the 4d value was changed to vermilion, which in turn required a colour change for the 8d, which was reissued in "eggshell blue".

In preparation for decimalisation in 1971, the BPO prepared a new palette of colours, enlisting the Applied Psychology Unit of the Cambridge University to test individuals' abilities to quickly identify colours. The results pruned a selection of 25 down to the 14 used for the decimal stamps.

During the 1970s a third effigy/ background colour format emerged in addition to the existing light head-dark background and the light head-graded background; the new variation consisted of head the same colour as the background, with just the shaded detail picking out the image. (In more recent years the light head-dark background has become near universal.)

Over the years, rate changes required new denominations, and in order to make colours available, older stamps had to be withdrawn. For instance, the 11p rose of 1976 was withdrawn in 1980, and the colour reused in 1983 for a 23p stamp. A re-introduced denomination could not normally get its old colour back though; the light green 17p of 1980 was withdrawn in 1981, reissued in steel blue in 1983, withdrawn 1986, and reappeared yet again in 1990, this time in dark blue.

In 1983, Aubrey Walker of the Royal Mail's R&D department proposed a fixed assignment of colours to rates, on the theory that the classes of service changed much less frequently than rates. This still did not solve the problem of clerks detecting usage of old stamps with lower rates - they would have had to read the denomination rather than just glance at the colour – and so a system of "light" and "dark" colours was suggested, the two variants alternating at each rate change. Artist Jeffery Matthews was then hired to develop the actual colours, and in 1985 presented eight pairs totalling 16 colours. The colour pairing idea turned out to be unworkable, but the colours were adopted, and in 1988 Matthews developed another 15 as rates continued to be changed.