Background
These days we’ve become used to the idea of protecting our most beautiful natural environments, but just a hundred years ago the principle was less developed. After a piecemeal approach in the 19th century, spearheaded by iconic figures such as John Muir, the US federal government decided in 1916 to create an independent body to oversee the country’s most precious landscapes and monuments. The National Park Service (NPS, nps.gov) was born and today continues to look after and promote the 59 parks under its control.
The Challenge
The challenge was to design unique and dynamic concepts for the FOUR stamp series, and to additionally present them on a First Day edition envelope. There was an additional challenge of designing the stamps entirely based around the style of the designer that I had 'drawn out of the hat'. The person who I chose was Petros Afshar, a fantastic UK graphic designer. Although he was and is a great artist, I still faced the challenge of coming up with original, non-cliché imagery celebrating this anniversary and promoting the NPS, while at the same time visually retaining the style, approach, and possibly color palette and font range of his designs. (Lets just say that it took a couple of days of sketching to get use to his art style, especially with his love for symmetry, geometric art and complicated line design.)
The Design Process
The beginning of making the stamps was the hardest because I had no idea where to start. The theme of my stamps changed several times until I finally decided to focus on the badge-type style that Afshar featured in several of his works. I thought that I was a clever way to connect Petros style with the NPS theme. I wanted to further push the style by incorporating different environmental signs. I found myself challenging the levels of complexity that I could use in the stamps. In the end I used ideas from each message of the stamps to stylize them, and here is a closer look at them.
The beginning of making the stamps was the hardest because I had no idea where to start. The theme of my stamps changed several times until I finally decided to focus on the badge-type style that Afshar featured in several of his works. I thought that I was a clever way to connect Petros style with the NPS theme. I wanted to further push the style by incorporating different environmental signs. I found myself challenging the levels of complexity that I could use in the stamps. In the end I used ideas from each message of the stamps to stylize them, and here is a closer look at them.
