Philately Fridays: Zaire, 1982

Two stamps from Zaire celebrating the convergence of telecommunications and health in a groovy early '80s Pushpin-esque fashion.

Philately Fridays: Djibouti, 1982

This is the first and only stamp I've ever found from the small Eastern African nation of Djibouti. Sort of a clusterfuck of graphic elements, but I really enjoy how haphazard and jerry-rigged the whole design is. Wild West lettering at the top with Arabic right underneath, the serif 150F, super angular satellite tower, and that gorgeous ultrabright cubic shape. Somehow it works!

Saul Bass & The Bell System

Designer Saul Bass is best known for his animated title sequences and promotional posters for movies. The work of his I admire most is his branding and identity systems. Throughout the 1960s and '70s, Saul Bass & Associates created dozens of fully fleshed out identities - not just logos, but entire visual dictionaries for airlines, food manufacturers, and, one of my favorites, the phone company. Here's just a taste of the cohesive branding system created for Ma Bell by Saul Bass starting in 1968.

Philately Fridays: France, 1979

France gettin' it in with a super retro-futuristic design for the 3rd world expo of telecommunications, held in Geneva Switzerland.