design on a very tiny scale

Postage stamps – they must be the cheapest and most accessible form of graphic design in our daily life.

I've always had a fascination for stamps, it started while I was at art college. I became amazed by the skill of the designer, conveying such detail and clarity on so tiny a scale. Not an easy job I assure you. Especially in the days before computers and modern printing methods. I think every designer worth their salt wanted to design stamps. I certainly did. 

So you can imagine my delight when I found a big box of stamps – thousands I expect – at the second hand emporium up here in the hills. I was especially delighted as I had a postage stamp product in mind and I was having such trouble finding stamps at any of my usual op shops.

I just had to buy the box. My mind filled with the possibilities of the treasures inside. Maybe a rare stamp that I could sell for thousands!

Luckily Drew was just as excited by my discovery, but was happy to let me do the tedious but slightly thrilling task of sifting through the thousands of stamps. Hours later, after many gleeful exclamations and sessions of online research, I found we had some very old stamps.

It seems that pre-Federation, each state had its own set of stamps. So any stamp I discovered that was missing the ubiquitious "Australia" on its face immediately went into my "special" pile. I discovered that we have an 1898 NSW stamp, and several Victorian stamps too. Plus lots of early one-colour Australian animal stamps. And for some reason a bunch of 1961 Christmas stamps.

So while I may trade the "treasures" for cash, most of the stamps will be featuring on new products to be released in the next few months. I'm having hours of fun sorting them by category, subject, country...