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Sending Love – Designing a Stamp For The U.S. Postal Service

 By: Greg Breeding – President & Creative Director at Journey Group.

I’ve served as an art director for the U.S. Postal Service for seven years. It’s a curious and delightful job and one that has brought me a great deal of creative fulfillment throughout my tenure. The process is quite fascinating, involving not only folks from the Postal Service but also American citizens who’ve been selected to help decide appropriate stamp subjects. Yet, as an art director, one of the most rewarding aspects of my work is developing relationships with the artists themselves.

The stamps I art direct — such as Johnny Cash or Batman — are typically assigned to me, but every now and then, I get to pitch my own ideas. There’s an open call to propose topics for ongoing series of stamps, such as those that feature the American flag or celebrate holidays or love. While there’s no shortage of creative ideas floating around my work/life atmosphere, as a designer and as president at Journey Group, it’s knowing when to capture the right idea that’s key — and then where to find the perfect collaborator.

Part I: Art directing and designing a stamp

The Love series started in 1973 with a stamp by pop artist Robert Indiana, and stamps from the series remain a favorite choice for those mailing valentines, wedding invitations or love letters. As an art director, Love stamps present an engaging creative challenge. You want to pitch something fresh and new, but the subject also needs to appeal to a broad audience — and reference the soaring emotion of love without being too saccharine or melodramatic.

As I was pondering ideas I had banked away, my colleague, Mike Ryan, creative director at Journey Group, campaigned to have Anna Bond design a stamp.

Anna Bond, for those who may not recognize her name, is the creative genius behind the wildly successful Rifle Paper Co. I first met Anna about 10 years ago when she was just beginning her design career and have kept up a long-distance friendship with her since then.

“Since I was little, it’s been my dream to design a stamp. I’ve always said that’s one of my top-five career goals.” — Anna Bond, Rifle Paper Co.

I, along with the rest of the world, love her vintage-inspired illustrations and aesthetic sensibilities. Upon hearing Mike’s suggestion, I knew she’d be the perfect illustrator for a Love stamp, and I had a hunch she would be up for the challenge. In 2015, Journey Group interviewed Anna for a feature story for the Postal Service website Beyond the Perf.

When Anna was 8 years old, she was given her grandfather’s stamp collection in a binder.

“I didn’t realize it, but looking back, it’s obvious that I was drawn to the graphic design of stamps,” she said. “Since I was little, it’s been my dream to design a stamp. I’ve always said that’s one of my top-five career goals.”

With the help of the team at Journey Group, I was excited to help make that dream come true.

The work

I struck up a conversation with Anna at a stamp show in New York, and we met for coffee to brainstorm about the future stamp. She was immediately on board, and I was delighted about the collaboration that was taking shape.

A floral design felt like both the obvious and right choice for this stamp, based on the series and on Anna’s aesthetic. I am also a sucker for hand-lettering, and I have always loved Anna’s loose, cheerful script on her stationery. We agreed that the design should be in the middle of the plate, with the word “Love” written in her script and surrounded by her signature flowers.

Anna began to work her magic, and in short order, we had two leading designs, one version on a dark green background and one on a white background. The stamp with the white background was ultimately chosen as the final design.

The result

The Love Flourishes stamp, which released on January 18, promises to be a thrilling success.

Anna and I were present for the First Day of Issue ceremony in Love, Arizona, and I was delighted to receive affirmation that Anna was the right choice. The audience was composed of many stamp collectors, as well as many fans of Anna’s work.

Part II: Translating stamp art

We were thrilled with the final stamp, and we were equally excited to extend the stamp’s success to another product that we work on at Journey Group: the Postal Service magazine USA Philatelic. For the spring 2018 issue, we knew that the Love Flourishes stamp would make a gorgeous and eye-catching cover.

Journey Group’s art director Ashley Walton and production designer Brittany Fan were enlisted to translate the stamp art to the magazine. Inspired by the stamp artwork, Ashley wanted to make the two-dimensional design come alive by using actual flowers and paper cut-outs for the cover.

With this concept in mind, Ashley and Brittany trekked to Washington, DC, to hunt for flowers at wholesale markets. A particular challenge was finding flowers with the right color, texture and feeling that would evoke Anna’s illustration — without knowing the exact names of the seemingly countless floral varieties.

Arriving with their arms full of flowers, Ashley and Brittany worked with photographer Len Rizzi to prepare the shoot in his studio, including laying out the design with hand-cut paper shapes and type, styling the flowers and mounting them in foam core, and managing consistent shadows, despite the differing depths of the material.

The team wanted to conjure up a cover that was soft, romantic and delicate and yet would stand up well next to Anna’s original artwork.

From start to finish, we were delighted with how the partnership with Anna Bond played out. As a person who works intimately with stamps, it was a pleasure to work with someone who still loves using stamps and sending mail through the post.

“It’s so special to receive a letter in the mail these days,” Anna said. “I’m used to getting mail that I don’t want to open, so I think a letter automatically makes you feel good because you know someone put effort into it. It shows they care.”

Anna’s effort and care with this design emphasizes the key to any successful creative collaboration. As an art director, what I’ve learned is that you give someone like Anna basic parameters and boundaries, and then you let her go. That’s when it goes well. The hardest and best thing I do as an art director is select the right artist. If I do that, the work flows beautifully. Choosing Anna for this project was the right call for the right time, and I loved helping her work find its way onto a stamp.

About the Author of this Post:

For Greg Breeding, strong communication—visual or spoken—is always about clarity. A graphic designer at heart and by trade, Greg’s decidedly Swiss perspective is shaped by years designing magazines, art-directing postage stamps for the U.S. Postal Service and taking an annual pilgrimage to (where else?) Switzerland to study the craft. Since co-founding Journey Group in 1992, he’s brought strong design thinking to many client relationships, building rapport through genuine interest, well-told stories and a subtle Southern drawl.

February 22, 2019 by

Qualities That Identify a Leader

Measurement of Leadership

Leadership qualities go beyond simply having followers or giving orders. 

If you are a leader of a ten-person team and only two of them follow you, you are not leading.

Influence is a key marker of a leader.

How do you recognize a leader?

It’s not by their prominence.

A leader can be out in front, in the middle, or following behind.

You recognize a leader by the response of their followers. A leader is someone who influences others to follow a course of action when they have a choice:

  • A leader is a person who says to others, “follow me!” And, they do.
  • A leader is a person who suggests, “I think this is the way to go.” And people go there.
  • A leader is a person who takes action. And others join in.
  • A leader is a person who does something new and others begin to do it also.
  • A leader has genuine followers—people who follow of their own volition.
  • If a leader shouts in the woods and no one hears them, are they a leader? No.

Your leadership impact depends on the ability to influence people, not your ability to command, coerce or manipulate.

Your leadership is measured not by what people do when you’re there, but by what they do when you’re not present—when no one is watching and they have the freedom to make personal choices.

So who do people follow after all?

  • Leaders they trust
  • Leaders who articulate a vision they believe in.
  • Leaders who seem to be competent and know what they are doing.
  • Leaders whose character they respect.

A person could have any title they want and not be a leader. But if you look closely, you can recognize who the real leaders are in your organization, community, and world.

Happy Leading!

January 25, 2019 by

Lead From Within

A company is stronger if it is bound by love rather than fear.

A company is stronger if it is bound by love rather than fear.
Herb Kelleher

The passing this week of Herb Kelleher—the man who filled the skies with flying hearts—made me reflect on compassion and the way we treat ourselves and each other.

At the beginning of each year, many of us set resolutions for ourselves and our businesses: we want our personal lives and our business lives to be better than they were the year before.

These resolutions are usually about fixing something that we perceive to be broken. We fixate on the negative. We give in to our inner critic. And, in doing so, we often forget to cultivate the positive.

This is to the detriment of ourselves and our businesses.

The goal of every leader should be to care about their teams and genuinely want to build them up individually and collectively. True leadership is about leading people, not organizations.

For us to be compassionate towards others, first we must be compassionate towards ourselves.

This year, when setting your goals, don’t focus purely on negative things that need to be changed. Instead, also take time to reflect on the positive things inside of yourself and how they can be enhanced and amplified.

This year, begin your leadership goals from within.

January 4, 2019 by

Here’s the best of 2018

As the year comes to a close, we want to say a special thank you to Brian Beitler and Mckeel Hagerty for their contributions to the Cult Branding blog. We also want to thank Tom Grimes, Marcus Thornton, and Tony Hsieh for many great discussions and insights throughout the year. And, we want to thank you for your readership. We look forward to bringing you insights on building brands that both employees and customers love in the coming year.

Below we curated the most popular, shared, and discussed articles from the Cult Branding blog in 2018. Please enjoy these three fantastic blog posts as a way to reflect as we enter the new year.

We wish you and your family a happy, healthy, and fantastic New Year.

Best,

BJ, Salim, and Aaron

How To Be MORE Creative

Being creative is essential to business: it provides the edge to beat the competition. In an increasingly competitive market, creative thinking is no longer solely the function of departments like advertising and product development; it is now necessary for everyone in the organization. Learn more about how to maximize your creative potential.

Don’t Differentiate, Create More Brand Desire!

The focus on differentiation as a driving discussion for a company or brand is flawed. The primary reason is that differentiation starts with a focus on what competitors are doing and not necessarily on what the customer wants, needs, or values in your brand. Read more about creating brand desire.

Lead With Purpose

What makes a good leader?
Great leaders focus on solving the problem, rather than being bogged down by focusing on the situation and how it applies to themselves. In the face of adversity, great leaders become outward-focused rather than inward-focused. Find out more about leading with purpose.

December 28, 2018 by

Have We Forgotten How to Say Thank You?

Google “How to Say Thank You” and you’ll get 2.18 billion results. Most are instructional. It’s surprising that something we learned to do as children has that many search results.

Somewhere in between childhood and adulthood, we forgot how to say thank you and, most importantly, mean it.

This is especially true in business where the market often forces companies to focus on short-term transactions rather than long-term relationships. When customers hear a “thank you” in business, it’s usually the result of a company policy instead of something genuine.

Saying something and meaning it comes across a lot differently than when you just go through the motions of saying it.If you don’t mean it: it’s just words. When you mean it, the words carry emotion. It’s the difference between someone faking a smile and a child opening up that gift they’ve wanted for months on Christmas morning.

Over a decade ago, a sales associate at Cole Haan sent me a handwritten thank you note. Thousands of transactions between then and now, and I’ve yet to receive another personal letter from any company that wasn’t mailed with a purchase. Recently, this thoughtful gesture came to mind when I received a beautifully wrapped scatola misteriosa from an upscale boutique, reminding me just how impactful personalized surprises can be. To this day, when I’m looking for something new, I check to see if Cole Haan has something I like first. And, guess what: my last clothing purchase was from Cole Haan.

All it took to make me consider Cole Haan first was a handwritten letter that took no longer than a couple of minutes to write. But, it was genuine. And, the sales associate had to look online to figure out how to thank me.

At its heart, saying “thank you” is about caring for customers. Customers want to matter and they want to engage with brands.

Yet, most companies are missing the chance to engage with their customers beyond trite responses to happy customers and copy-and-paste legalese for angry customers.

This is a big missed opportunity. But, it’s not an opportunity that can be feigned. It can only be done with caring. And, a good start is creating a culture that cares enough to genuinely say, “Thank you.”

November 30, 2018 by

Where Are You Headed?

Quickly and with haste.

But what happens when you get there?

Thanksgiving is our favorite holiday. It gives us an opportunity to connect with the power of gratitude. Dr. Andrew Weil recommends considering each day what went well and why as an antidote to our chaotic world and as an opportunity to uplift our mood.

We are thankful for each of you, and so many other leaders who work towards making the world a better place.

Stay thankful.

November 23, 2018 by

Why You Should Play at Work

 

In a society that values goals and results, it’s easy to see why play isn’t valued by adults.

Play is a state more than it is a thing. Play involves doing something enjoyable for its own sake. There is no goal aside from enjoying the experience.

But, play is not a trivial activity: play makes people happier, it helps develop empathy, it reduces stress, and it strengthens resolve.
Continue Reading

November 9, 2018 by

How to Create Powerful Brand Rituals

“Before I can tell you the story, you have to try the shot.” – Fred Mossler Co-Founder Zappos.

You mean the one with the scorpion in it?

“Yeah and you should shoot it together, you definitely don’t want to eat the scorpion alone.” – Fred

“BJ, The Scorpion Shot is so popular, that we are now vertically integrating scorpions into our business model.” – Tony Hsieh Zappos CEO

We are celebrating Nacho Daddy’s 5 Year Anniversary in Las Vegas.

Fascinated by all things culture, I am naturally intrigued by the story and the sense of community that taking this shot provides.

Gulp! It’s gone, scorpion and all.

Soon after we are sitting in the middle of T-Mobile Arena where the biggest show in Vegas is about to go off, the Knights take the ice, and the crowd goes wild. Maybe it’s the tequila or the scorpion, but I am vibrating even though I have no clue about the game of hockey, but I understand people can feel the energy and it is electric.

Brand Rituals are All Around Us

Separating Oreo’s and dunking it in milk, or Breaking a KitKat into halves and eating it on a break, Popping the cap of the Pringles tube or if you want to get fancy The Stella Artois’ 9-step pouring ritual. These brand rituals play a crucial role in building a sense of belonging and community around the brands.

Rituals offer consumers the chance to interact with a brand. Because people want more than just consumption – they appreciate experiences.

Over the years I have observed different strategies that work towards creating powerful and emotional experiences. Here are a few questions to consider when building your plan:

Can you create and experience specific to your audience?

How can it be specific to your brand?

Ritualize Your Brand

Our job is to explore the elements of your brand that lend themselves to becoming ritualized. How might you make your product or service part of the daily lives of your customers? Is it even possible?

How might you use brand rituals to create a greater sense of “team” and “family” with your employees, and to fuel their passions for supporting the brand?

Creating a ritual around your brand, whether it’s focused internally or externally, is one of the most useful tools you have to engage people and it’s one of the critical components necessary for building a successful cult brand.

Onward!

November 2, 2018 by

How Mindfulness Improves the Workplace

“The best way to capture moments is to pay attention. This is how we cultivate mindfulness. Mindfulness means being awake. It means knowing what you are doing.”
Jon Kabat-Zinn

The truth is that many of us spend most of our time in the office. Think about how you can transform the lives of those around you by becoming more aware.

This shift toward more humanistic management practices doesn’t merely improve productivity, creativity, collaboration, loyalty, and profitability; it can also help the people around you become better spouses, better parents, and better citizens.

You can invite your employees to grow by finding ways to make the workplace more engaging (less static), more inspiring (less mundane), and more open (less fixed). As Abraham Maslow put it, “We must try to make a particular kind of people, of personality, of character, of soul one might say, rather than try to create directly particular kinds of behavior.”

When we practice mindfulness, we are training our brains to examine internal and external cues rather than react to them, so we can better manage emotions and develop into our full humanity.

October 26, 2018 by

Narrow Your Brand Focus

A brand becomes stronger when you narrow the focus.
Al Ries and Laura Ries, The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding.

Keeping a brand on course is one of the most critical and difficult challenges executives face. A narrow brand focus will help keep your brand aligned with your core business and in tune with your best customers. Below are four questions that can help your organization stay focused on what is most important for the brand.

Why do we exist?

Beyond making money, it is essential to know what purpose your brand serves. Knowing what problems your brand helps solve for its customers is key to building a strong, profitable brand.

What values and beliefs unify our employees and our customers?

Recruiting a high-performance team is vital to your organization’s ability to deliver on its brand promise. Knowing the core values that resonate deep within your organization and with your Brand Lovers is essential for attracting passionate employees and creating customers who love your brand. The more you understand what your brand stands for, the better you will be at drawing in people who love working for you and enjoy doing business with you.

How do we measure success?

If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there. Having a brand promise of what success looks like allows your organization to remain focus on the big picture.

What is holding us back?

Making progress toward the brand promise of a brand is not easy. It does not come without sacrifice and a lot of hard work. To be successful, you have to let go of the norms and embrace discomfort. The solutions that worked to get the brand where it is today will not ensure success in the future.

Now that you’re in the final stretch of 2018, have you done a thorough, top-to-bottom progress evaluation on your brand? Where are the big misses? What’s behind or underneath the numbers? What needs to be done differently?

Which of these challenges will you take into consideration as you plan for 2019?  Pick one or two to bring to your next executive session.

Onward!

October 19, 2018 by