Philately Fridays: Samoa 1976

Here's a funky foursome from Samoa. Between these stamps and The Wild Samoans, all I know about this country is its affinity towards competitive athleticism. I should probably do some research.

Electric Company: Sign Song

Philately Fridays: Amsterdam's Postzegelmarkt

While in Amsterdam in early April, I was pretty excited to discover a small cluster of shops specializing in old coins, postcards, and most importantly, vintage postage stamps. If that weren't enough, each Wednesday morning, local stamp and coin dealers set up booths about 20 paces around the corner from these shops and sell their goods. I'm used to crotchety record dealers who hardly make up in tact what they lack in hygiene. By way of comparison, these Dutch stamp dealers were all super friendly and the general atmosphere of a stamp sale was much more enjoyable than that of a record fair. Here's a small sample of the great stamps I came up on at the market and surrounding shops.



Netherlands, 1972
Read about the Delta Works





Germany, 1986
I finally foud the other two stamps from this set I featured two years ago.





Netherlands, 1974









Netherlands, 1984
Four stamp set from Dutch comic artist and master of the "clear line" style, Joost Swarte.



Netherlands, 2001 / Click image for larger view
Six stamp set by Dutch graphic artist and screenprinter Harmen Liemburg. While we were visiting his studio, Harmen mentioned this stamp set he had designed and I was really happy to find it in the first shop we set foot in.

If you're ever in Amsterdam on a Wednesday between 10am and 4pm, I recommend stopping by the Postzegelmarkt right here.

Pushpin Studios for Chicago Channel 2

Check out Pushpin's allstar lineup of Milton Glaser and Seymour Chwast goin' in on these great promo graphics for Chicago's CBS Channel 2. These were created under the creative direction of the great Lou Dorfsman.

David Quay

London-based type designer David Quay studied typography under Ralph Beyer, from whom he learned to pay extra attention to the negative space between letters, as that information will dictate how an entire piece of type will look. David always argued that beautiful type could be strong and expressive enough to stand on its own as fully-finished design. See some of his evidence below and I'm sure you'll agree.


Click for larger view


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Click for larger view

Philately Fridays: Two from Japan

Wow, OK sorry it's been so long since I posted here. I've been coming up on a bunch of new stamps lately, so expect more regular updates from here on out! Kicking things back into gear with two nice geometric designs from Japan, one an expressive representation of the chaos of Expo '70 and another for 1980's JCI World Congress.