Postage Stamp Design - Design Process

Design Process

Once a general subject has been chosen, the postal administration typically contracts an outside artist to produce a design.

In working up a design, the artist must take into account the rules and constraints as mentioned above, and perhaps additional requirements, such as membership in a series of related designs.

In addition, the artist must consider the consequence of working on a small "canvas"; for instance, traditional paintings often reduce into an amorphous blur, and so the stamp designer will opt to pick a single interesting and/or characteristic detail as the center of the design. Similarly, a stamp consisting of simply a portrait will mean little to many users, and the artist may opt to include a visual element suggesting the person's accomplishments, such as an architect's most famous building, or simply add the word "architect" somewhere in the design.

The artist then submits one or more designs for the postal administration's approval. The accepted design may undergo several rounds of modification before entering the production process. The design may also be abandoned, perhaps if circumstances have changed, such as a change of government.

Designs may also be modified as a result of other considerations; for instance, the design of a US stamp honoring Jackson Pollock was based on a photograph showing him smoking a cigarette, but not desiring to be promoting, the cigarette was removed from the design. In general, stamps are not photographic reproductions of the subjects they depict.