Jersey Petrology set

On 9 March 2010, Jersey Post will issue a set of five postage stamps featuring petrology specimens found in Jersey.
The oldest rocks in Jersey are the Shale’s which are over 700 million years old. However, the best known rocks in the island are the pink and grey Granites and Diorites. They make up a third of the Island and were formed between 560 and 480 million years ago by molten rock cooling and solidifying deep between the Earth's surface. The specimens featured may all be seen at the MP Shah Gallery at Jersey Heritage's La Hougue Bie Museum, Grouville, Jersey.

Canada's gold goes postal

Canada's gold fever will continue to spread across the country in the form of a postage stamp.

After a "top secret" development process, on Monday Canada Post unveiled a special stamp to celebrate the first Olympic gold medal of the Vancouver games. Alexander Bilodeau's men's moguls victory on Sunday brought the host country its first gold on Canadian soil

despite having hosted the games twice before – in Montreal in 1976 and in Calgary in 1988.

The stamps are being sold as a souvenir sheet of two stamps or a book of 10. Canada Post is also selling souvenir coins.

20th Anniversary of the Irish Library's creation

The year 2004 coincides with the 75th anniversary of Grace Patricia Kelly who was born in Philadelphia and became Princess of Monaco in the year 1956. This year also corresponds to the 40th anniversary of the Princess Grace Foundation, aimed at helping the artists and at supporting the children in hospital. The Rose Garden and the Irish Library, dedicated to the Princess, celebrate the 20th anniversary of their creation. Ensley, the statue representing the Princess Grace and created by the artist Daphne Du Barry, is located in front of the "Princess Grace Hospital" and was inaugurated in the year 2003.

Maps of Jersey on stamps

On 9 February, Jersey Post will issue five new self-adhesive postage stamps for use on items of mail requiring the minimum postage tariff for the other Channel Islands and United Kingdom destinations.
The stamps will feature a variety of maps of Jersey, both antique and modern, dating from 1685 and it is interesting to observe the apparent thoughts of cartographers over the different periods of time.

These Non Value Indicator stamps (NVI's) will be the first set of stamps to bear a change in the wording of Jersey Post's NVIs. Previously, each NVI stamp in this set would have been titled 'UK Minimum Postage Paid' but the stamps will now read 'UK Letter' instead

New stamps honor 4 Navy veterans

Raleigh Albert Burke, the famous World War II Navy commander, left his mark on his hometown of Boulder, and now his stamp will go on America's mail.
Burke is among four Navy heroes depicted on the stamps.

The stamps, designed by Phil Jordan of Falls Church, VA, are based on photographs from Navy archives. Text along the top of the stamp sheet identifies the four sailors, the approximate date of each photograph, and a ship named in honor of each sailor.

Design evolution

Stamp design has undergone a gradual process of evolution, traceable both to advances in printing technology and general changes in taste. Design "fads" may also be observed, where a number of countries tend to imitate each other. This may be driven by printing houses, many of which design and print stamps for multiple countries.


This classic Art Nouveau design of 1900s France and her colonies continued in use into the 1920s.
For instance, although multi-color printing was always possible, and may be seen on the earliest stamps of Switzerland, the process was slow and expensive, and most stamps were in one or two colors until the 1960s.
From time to time postal administrations also try experiments. For instance, the US tried issuing very small stamps during the 1970s, as a cost savings measure. They were extremely unpopular, and the experiment was abandoned.


"Pasteurization" on a Canadian Christmas stamp of 1973.
While modern tastes tend to favor simpler designs, some countries have also put out "retro" designs, using modern techniques to mimic the more elaborate designs of the past, perhaps even with anachronistic elements. A 2004 example is the Lewis and Clark stamps of the US, whose frames are classic 19th-century, surrounding full-color portraits of a quality not available until the latter half of the 20th century.
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.


Even as a large-format design, this painting on a stamp of Peru looks like a muddle, and magnification merely shows the physical limitations of the printing process.
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 jazz musician [??] 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.

Design successes and failures

In the end, successful stamp designs receive relatively little notice from the general public, but considerable praise from the philatelic press. Publications such as Linn's Stamp News will headline the most interesting new stamps on their front page, and report the results of popularity polls.
On the other side, design errors regularly get through the multiple stages of review and checking. Errors have ranged from minute points of rendition (such as the subtly-reversed ears on an Austrian stamp of the 1930s), to misrepresentations of disputed territory in maps, to mistaken text ("Sir Codrington" on 1920s Greece), to the truly spectacular, such as the US "Legends of the West" sheet using the picture of the wrong person. See stamp design error for further detail.
Another category of failure includes designs that are simply rejected by the stamp-buying public. The 1970s-era anti-alcoholism stamp of the US is a well-known example; it consists merely of the slogan "Alcoholism: You Can Beat It!", which must have looked good during the design process, but affixed to the corner of an envelope it suggests that the recipient is an alcoholic in need of public encouragement, and few people ever used this stamp on their mail.
Even so, and despite the rise of e-mail, the three-way conversation between postal authority, artist, and the public that is the stamp design process continues unabated.

Graphic design

The first of many profiles of Queen Victoria
The graphic element of a stamp design falls into one of four major categories:
Portrait bust - profile or full-face
Emblem - coat of arms, flag, national symbol, post horn, etc
Numeric - a design built around the numeral of value
Pictorial
The use of portrait busts (of the ruler or other significant person) or emblems was typical of the first stamps, by extension from currency, which was the closest model available to the early stamp designers.
Usage pattern has varied considerably; for 60 years, from 1840 to 1900, all British stamps used exactly the same profile bust of Victoria, enclosed in a dizzying variety of frames, while Spain periodically updated the image of Alfonso XIII as he grew from child to adult. Norway has issued stamps with the same post horn motif for over a century, changing only the details from time to time as printing technology improves, while the US has placed the flag of the United States into a wide variety of settings since first using it on a stamp in the 1950s.


A 2 1/2-cent numeral design from 1915 Netherlands Antilles
While numeral designs are eminently practical, in that they emphasize the most important element of the stamp, they are the exception rather than the rule.
By far the greatest variety of stamp design seen today is in pictorial issues. The choice of image is nearly unlimited, ranging from plants and animals, to figures from history, to landscapes, to original artwork. Images may represent real-world objects, or be allegories or abstract designs.


Queen Margret he, 135 years later
The choice of pictorial designs is governed by a combination of anniversaries, required annual issues (such as Christmas stamps), postal rate changes, exhaustion of existing stamp stocks, and popular demand. Since postal administrations are either a branch of government or an official monopoly under governmental supervision, the government has ultimate control over the choice of designs. This means that the designs tend to depict a country as the government would like it to be perceived, rather than as it really is. The Soviet Union issued thousands of stamps extolling the successes of communism, even as it was falling apart, while in the US the only contemporary stamp hinting at the unrest of the 1960s is an issue exhorting Americans to support their local police.
In some cases, overt political pressure has resulted in a backlash; a famous example is that of the US in the late 1940s, when the US Congress had direct authority over stamp design, and a large number of issues were put out merely to please a representative's constituency or industry lobbyists. The resulting uproar resulted in the formation of an independent Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee that reviews and chooses from hundreds of proposals received each year. Occasionally the public is polled for its choice of design, as with the US Elvis stamp of 1993, or some issues of the Celebrate the Century series.
Many countries have specific rules governing the choice of designs or design elements. Stamps of the UK must depict the sovereign (typically as a silhouette), while stamps of the US may not visibly depict any person who has been dead for less than 10 years, except for ex-Presidents, who may appear on a stamp one year after their demise. The choice of postage stamp color may be specified, acting as a sort of color code to different rates.
Most countries issue commemorative issues from time to time, perhaps to celebrate some special event, with designs relating to the event. While they are legitimate postage stamps, and often used for routine post, they are intended to appeal particularly to stamp collectors. Stamps that are collected without being used are paid for, but the purchaser chooses not to use the postal service purchased, leaving 100% clear profit. First day covers, often containing more stamps than are required for postage, are an additional source of revenue. This source of money is not inexhaustible, as excessive stamp issues go unpurchased.
Some countries, usually poorer ones, produce many special issues intended purely for collectors from other countries. These stamps are designed for visual appeal, with attractive brightly coloured designs on interesting topics, often large and of unusual shape. Themes have included space-related subjects from a country with no space program, polar animals from a country on the equator, Western rock stars from a conservative Muslim country, and so forth. International organizations of philatelists discourage the practice, not wanting collectors to be discouraged by floods of stamps which will never have any rarity value. See stamp program for more detail.
[edit]Textual elements



Textual elements written in a variety of scripts on a stamp of Israel.
Nearly all stamps have some amount of text embedded in their design. In addition to the expected denomination and country name, textual elements may include a statement of purpose ("postage", "official mail", etc), a plate number, the name of a person being portrayed, the occasion being commemorated, the year of stamp issue, and national mottoes.
Occasionally designs use text as their primary design element; for instance, a series of US stamps from the 1970s featured quotations from the United States Declaration of Independence. In general however, text has come to be used more sparingly in recent years.
Countries with multiple languages and multiple scripts may need to write the material multiple times. Labuan is an early example; more recently, stamps of Israel include its name in Hebrew, Latin, and Arabic characters.
In addition to text woven into the description, stamps may also have inscriptions in the outside margin. These are almost always at the bottom, and are usually the name of the printer and/or designer. Occasionally a textual description of the design is found in the margin, while in recent years, the lower left margin has become a common place to include the year of issue. Philatelists count changes in these marginal inscriptions as distinct types of stamps.
[edit]Hidden elements and "secret marks"

Sometimes designers include tiny elements into a design, sometimes at the request of the stamp-issuing authority, sometimes on their own. Stamps may have a year or name worked into a design, while the US stamp honoring Rabbi Bernard Revel has a minute Star of David visible in his beard.
Secret marks are small design alterations added to distinguish printings unambiguously. These usually take the form of small lines or marks added to clear areas of a design. Chinese stamps of the 1940s have secret marks in the form of slightly altered characters, where two arms might be changed to touch, when previously they were separate.
[edit]Shape and size



Postage stamps of various shapes and sizes, from Italy, Yemen Arab Republic, France, and Hungary.
The usual shape of a postage stamp is a rectangle, this being an efficient way to pack stamps on a sheet. A rectangle wider than tall is called a "horizontal design", while taller than wide is a "vertical design".
A number of additional shapes have been used, including triangles, rhombuses, octagons, circles, and various freeform shapes including heart shapes, and even a banana shaped stamp issued by Tonga from 1969 to 1985.
The usual size ranges from 10-30 mm in each direction, experience having shown this to be the easiest to handle. Many countries use only a limited selection of dimensions, to simplify automated machinery that handles stamps.
The smallest postage stamp on record was issued by Mecklenburg-Schwerin in 1856, and was a square, with sides measuring 10 millimeters.
The biggest stamps in history were used in the USA from 1865 and measured 52 by 95 millimeters, but were used exclusively for mailing newspapers.