Studio A

If you’re in DC, there’s an exhibition of 19th century photographs of China paired with displays of period Chinese textiles at the Textile Museum/George Washington University Museum. It’s an interesting show, including an unnerving display of shoes for a woman who practiced ritual foot-binding. Studio A worked with the museum on the exhibition graphics and guide.

The new snowflake stamps we designed are on sale! They’re having a First Day of Issue ceremony in Manhattan today, with Leslie Badani on hand to sign souvenir programs! Maybe you’ll see these on a holiday card this winter. We hope so!

Thanks to Communication Arts for this little piece on the Summer Harvest stamps! It was great working with artist Michael Doret to pull this set together. The project was definitely a lesson in patience! Read the article here: http://www.commarts.com/exhibit/summer-harvest-postage.html

Is it too early to talk about Christmas? Even “A Charlie Brown Christmas?” These stamps were announced earlier this week and will be on sale starting October 1. In designing these, we used artwork from the original television special, which aired first 50 years ago and has been broadcast every year since! We thought it might be our first opportunity to appropriately use Comic Sans, but ultimately we used a special font created from Charles Schulz’s original lettering. We can’t wait to start sending our holiday cards! Let us know if you want to be added to the mailing list.

How about using stamps to promote a stamp show? Michael Dyer designed these red and blue “Forever” stamps with art direction by Antonio Alcalå. First issued last week, their design was inspired by 1865 oversized newspaper stamps like this five cents example featuring George Washington. The World Stamp Show will be in NYC next May 28-June 4, with lots of graphic design on display. Maybe we’ll see you there!

It’s “Elvis Week” at Graceland in Memphis, TN. What better way to celebrate than the release of a new Elvis stamp? This beauty, designed at Studio A by Leslie Badani with art direction by Antonio Alcalá, was unveiled yesterday by Priscilla Presley at Graceland. Special thanks to Richard Friend, Leah Alcalá, and all the other Elvis fans around the world.

Uppercase magazine (“for the creative and curious”) published several articles on the art of stamps in their July–September issue. We’re pleased to see projects we did with Jessica Hische and Gail Anderson featured! It’s a fun magazine published, edited, and designed by a single person! Check it out at uppercasemagazine.com. Thanks for the tip Pat Taylor!

We recently completed the Smithsonian’s Annual Report, working with a great group from ”The Castle” including Bill Tabor, Lynn Gutter, Marcela Luna, and Denise Arnot. We’ve had the honor of helping with this important document for the past three years, gathering insights about the institution and many educational efforts. Maybe we’ll get lucky and be asked again next year!

A little piece by Steven Heller for the Atlantic cites our recently designed Summer Harvest stamps. Can design entice you to use stamps?

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/07/usps-stamp-design-summer-harvest/398657/

Summer harvests. Yum! These stamps will have their First Day of Issue ceremony in Sacramento, CA this Saturday, July 11. The designs suggest old can or crate labels. The art is by Michael Doret with art direction by Antonio Alcalá.

In Monterrey, Mexico, the US consulate has a great collection of art by American and Mexican artists, thanks to the State Department’s Art in Embassies program. Here’s the bilingual catalogue we recently designed for them. The orange echoes bright colors found in many Mexican artworks. Inside, the type builds up from the baseline, alluding to Monterrey’s location in a valley surrounded by mountains. And the typeface is Mercury. We hope you like it!

It’s happened again! Our stamp design (with Jessica Hische) was an answer last night on Jeopardy! Thanks to Carlos for the tip and photo!

One week ago, the great calligrapher and type designer Hermann Zapf died. In 1960, he visited the United States, staying with his close friend Toni Dehn in Berea, Ohio. Upon returning home, he created this special private record of his visit, complete with home photos and beautiful hand-lettering, and mailed it to Toni Dehn. In the 1980s, she gifted it to her distant relative Antonio and it now resides in the Studio A library filed under Z. Stop by, take a look, and remember his kindness and incredible talent.

The future? We recently designed this exhibition catalogue for the Textile Museum. Prepared as a downloadable interactive PDF, it is also available in a Print-On-Demand format. The client is thrilled because the content gets distributed electronically, is archived in a hard-copy format, and they are spared the expense of printing and maintaining an inventory. Check it out: http://www.magcloud.com/browse/issue/897484

It’s a bonus when many of our favorites come together in one package. This weekend we picked up this sheet of stamps designed by Experimental Jetset in 2012 for the Staedlijk Museum. Crouwel, Mevis & Van Deursen, Rietveld, Sandberg, Malevich, and so on. You can read more about their design here:http://www.experimentaljetset.nl/archive/stedelijk-museum-stamps