Studio A

Even though it’s only September, USPS wants you to think ahead! This past Saturday the new Holiday Joy stamps were issued with a celebration at the National Postal Museum. The stamps, inspired by Mexican folk art, use original digital illustrations by Los Angeles-based artist Michelle Muñoz, with art direction and design by Antonio Alcalá. A brief speech was made encouraging everyone to use their creativity and send messages by mail to friends and family. Have fun, and share a little Holiday Joy!

Last week, the Folger Shakespeare Library opened their new and expanded exhibition space. Studio A, in partnership with Polygraph, was selected to design the inaugural show in their temporary exhibition gallery. “Imprints in Time” features fifty rare books and manuscripts representing highlights of literature, science, religion, and philosophy.

Our design contributions included space planning, wall text, object labels, giveaway booklets, a microsite, and a wallpaper-like treatment for the gallery. The wallpaper design includes nine medallions featuring authors of works in the exhibition, surrounded by imagery related to their writing and lives. You can get a better look at the medallions here and view some images of the treasures in the show.

It was a great honor to be selected for this important first exhibition, and a pleasure working with my colleagues at Polygraph. I hope you get a chance to see the show (it closes on January 5, 2025).

Thank you to the dmi: Diversity in Design Conference for inviting Antonio to give a presentation on the creation of the Underground Railroad stamps. Positioned between a panel about career paths and a presentation by Katie Lee of Smart Design about AI, the talk about postage stamps was a fun interlude.

Our stamp design commemorating the Underground Railroad was issued yesterday, March 10, by the United States Postal Service.

The network of people, places, and routes known as the Underground Railroad functioned to help people in this country escape enslavement. The full pane of stamps honors ten people as representatives of the hundreds of anonymous people involved in successfully using and supporting the Underground Railroad. The words highlight experiences of those who took part, in colors alluding to the diversity of participants.

Bright and early this morning, Helen did a press inspection for one of our favorite clients: #oakspringgardenfoundation. Soon, visitors will be able to collect a booklet about the beautiful, playful, and enchanting garden Mrs. Mellon developed during her life at Oak Spring. Be sure to visit during Historic Garden Week, April 25-26.

Today is the First Day of Issue for the new Love stamp we designed, with an illustration by Katie Kirk of Eight Hour Day and a typeface by Michael Doret. We’re particularly excited about these as we have a wedding in the house and these will be used on the invitations! How cool is that? Be sure to get some of your own and send a little love to a friend. 

Happy New Year! Each month, we’ll be updating our homepage with one new Studio A project. This month, we’re featuring the 2024 “love” stamp we designed. It shows a dove carrying a letter sealed with a heart (illustration by Katie Kirk). Perfect for wedding invitations, valentines, or a simple note to someone you care about, it goes on sale January 12. We hope you love it!

The National Museum of Women in the Arts reopened this week after being closed for two years to complete a 70 million dollar renovation. One of their opening exhibitions, “The Sky’s The Limit,” features large-scale contemporary sculptures. We are honored to have designed the catalogue for this re-opening show. The large format book (9.25 x 12.25 inches) features six pages on each artist’s work, two curator essays, and is typeset in Campeche—a type designed by Sofia Mohr.

Today the USPS issued these “Winter Woodland Animals” stamps. With art by Katie Kirk and art direction by Antonio Alcalá, we think these will be perfect for holiday greetings (and all your other winter messages). How can you resist that rabbit??? Let us know which is your favorite.

Here’s another book we recently designed for the Frost Art Museum FIU. We especially enjoyed being introduced to the under-recognized artwork of Addie Herder. Her intricate collage constructions are formally beautiful and often mysterious. Definitely worth a closer look. Also, shout out to Marti Davila for doing much of the work on this project!

A lot of Studio A’s work is with the museum community. Here’s a book we recently completed for the Eskenazi Museum of Art in Indiana and Scala Arts Publishers: “Form and Surface: African Ceramics from the Collection of William M. Itter.” Our job was to design a simple and elegant presentation of these gorgeous ceramics pieces.

For Hispanic Heritage Month, as part of their “Hidden Histories” series, PBS NewsHour looked back on the life of Lydia Mendoza, a Mexican American singer whose music bridged styles and cultures to tell the stories of the working class.

Bonus! They end the 4-minute piece by showing the stamp Antonio art directed 10 years ago!
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/the-life-of-lydia-mendoza-the-1st-queen-of-tejano-music

While many of us were enjoying our Sunday visiting museums or watching football, the folks at NASA held their collective breath as the OSIRIS-REx mission returned to Earth after collecting samples of asteroid Bennu. The successful landing means it’s time to celebrate! And what better way than with a new stamp, right? We had a great time working with NASA to create this sheet of stamps commemorating the mission—released just in time for the OSIRIS-REx return!

In case you missed last week’s unveiling of the new stamps celebrating Piñatas, here’s a photo of the four festive designs! Long a presence at fiestas throughout the southwest, piñatas can now be found at birthday parties around the country. Antonio worked with the Mexican-American artist Victor Melendez to create these colorful stamps. We hope you like them (candy not included)!

Studio A had the great honor to design the exhibition catalogue for the “Breaking The Rules” show at the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, CA (up until August 27).

“In reaction to the widespread pursuit of Abstract Expressionism in the late 1940s and early 1950s, several avant-garde artists in the San Francisco Bay Area began to reengage with the visible world, applying the gestural style of action painting to depictions of people, landscapes, and still lifes.” The artist couple Paul Wonner (1920–2008) and William Theophilus “Bill” Brown (1919–2012), both of whom had just completed master’s degrees in art from the University of California, Berkeley, aligned themselves with this new direction and became leading practitioners of the style known today as “Bay Area Figuration.” (from the Crocker’s website).

After the exhibition closes at the Crocker Art Museum, it travels to the Laguna Art Museum in Laguna Beach, California (October 14, 2023–January 7, 2024), and the Dixon Gallery and Gardens in Memphis, Tennessee (January 28–March 30, 2024).