Designing fast postage stamps
I don’t know that I’ve ever wondered about how stamps are designed, but this description of Canada Post’s Urban Transit/Light Rail stamp, issued in March of last year, is pretty interesting.
“‘The designer took a photographer to the service yard of each transit company, where they took photos of the cars, all in profile, with similar lighting in each place,’ says Bill Danard, Design Manager of Stamp Products at Canada Post. ‘The perception of speed was digitally manipulated at a later stage.’
The sense of motion is enhanced by the layout of the stamps in four strips of four on a pane of 16. ‘This provides horizontal continuity, but it was difficult to produce,’ says Danard. ‘We had to make sure the images adjoined perfectly along the sides.’
Debbie Adams designed the stamps, and she explains that on the pane ‘the trains become continuous, achieving the sense of rapid movement and multi-train activity that define a commuter system.’
Individually, each of the four stamps has three bands, two depicting trains in motion. One shows a stationary train with commuters getting on and off, and reproduces the names of some stations in microtype. ‘For those views, the photographer shot on-site, visiting transit stations and taking quite a lot of photos in order to capture appropriate images with people in them’ says Danard.”
And get this rhetoric!
“As Canadian cities continue to grow and the need for public transportation increases, these speedy commuter trains may well set us on the fast track to the future.”