Postage stamp design

Postage stamp design is the activity of graphic design as applied to postage stamps. Many thousands of designs have been created since a profile bust of Queen Victoria was adopted for the Penny Black in 1840; some designs have been considered very successful, others less so.

A stamp design includes several elements required for it to accomplish its purpose satisfactorily. Most important is the denomination indicating its monetary value, while international agreements require a country name on almost all types of stamps. A graphic design is very nearly universal; in addition to making counterfeits harder to produce and aiding clerks in quick recognition of appropriate postage, postal customers simply expect stamps to carry a design.

The fundamental purpose of a stamp is to indicate the prepayment of postage. Since different kinds and sizes of mail normally pay different amounts of postage, the stamps need to carry a value. In a very few cases, the denomination has been omitted; for instance, during the tumults of 1949 China, undenominated stamps were issued, so as to allow the price of a stamp to fluctuate on a daily basis depending on the value of the gold yuan.

The usual form of the denomination is a number, optionally preceded or followed by a currency symbol. Many early stamps wrote the denomination out in words, but the Universal Postal Union later required that stamps on international mail use Arabic numerals, for the benefit of clerks in foreign countries. A number of recent stamps have substituted a textual description of the rate being charged, such as "1st" for first-class letters, or "presorted ZIP+4" to indicate a particular type of bulk mail. Another form of nonnumerical denomination is that used for rate change stamps, in which the timing and politics of the rate-setting process is such that the stamps must be printed before the rate is known. In such cases, the preprinted stamps simply state "A", "B", etc., with the equivalent rate being announced just before they go on sale.

Canada also uses a non-numerical denomination, the mark "P" printed over a maple leaf, on its domestic postage rate stamps. The letter "P" stands for "Permanent" which indicates that the stamp is always accepted regardless of the current domestic postal rate. Anytime the domestic rate changes, the permanent value stamps already in circulation continue to be accepted and the new rate applies to the purchase of new permanent value stamps.

Semi-postal stamps are usually denominated with two values, with a "+" between, the first indicating the actual rate, and the second the additional amount to be given to a charity. In a very few cases a country has had a dual currency, and the stamps may depict a value in both currencies.

The second required element, at least for stamps intended to be used on international mail, is the name of the country. The first postage stamps, those of the United Kingdom, had no name. In 1874 the Universal Postal Union exempted the United Kingdom from its rule which stated that a country's name had to appear on their postage stamps, so a profile of the reigning monarch was all that was required for identification of the UK's stamps. To this day the UK remains the only country not required to name itself on its stamps. For all other UPU members, the name must appear in Latin letters. Many countries using non-Latin alphabets used only those on their early stamps, and they remain difficult for most collectors to identify today.

The name chosen is typically the country's own name for itself, with a modern trend towards using simpler and shorter forms, or abbreviations. For instance, the Republic of South Africa inscribes with "RSA", while Jordan originally used "The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan", and now just "Jordan". Some countries have multiple allowed forms, from which the designer may choose the most suitable. The name may appear in an adjectival form, as in Poșta Română ("Romanian Post") for Romania. Dependent territories may or may not include the name of the parent country.