Hasta La Ideas

In 2005, the US Postal Service inadvertently started a design battle between Europe and the Americas with the launch of their Masterworks of Modern Architecture series. The next year, the Dutch released the very first animated stamp. This was followed by Canada’s recognition-by-stamp of all their most famous designers, which was blatantly copied by the UK when they did the exact same thing earlier this year. In the interim, the US had fired back with a beautiful Eames retrospective in 2008. Now, with our Postal Service preparing to issue its standard fare of cowboys, butterflies, and comic strip characters, England has fired another powerful salvo with a collection of stamps featuring iconic British album covers. The Royal Mail collaborated with London’s Studio Dempsey in creating the ten stamps, which include such classics as Blur‘s Parklife and Let It Bleed by The Rolling Stones, are set to be released this Thursday. The incredibly-British sounding paper, the Watton and Swaffham Times, has this great piece on Terry Pastor, who designed the cover for David Bowie‘s The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust, which has also found its way onto the stamp collection. And now that the UK currently has the upper-hand in this design-y war, who will be the next to answer? May god have mercy on us all.

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