99% Invisible - 99% Invisible-47- US Postal Service Stamps

Episode Date: February 10, 2012

Somebody might be able to do a great painting that’s 20 x 30 inches, but you take that down to 1 x 1.5 inches, and it’s a challenge to make it work. -Ethel Kessler, Art Director for USPS Stamp Services … Continue reading →

We get support from UC Davis, a globally ranked university, working to solve the world's most pressing problems in food, energy, health, education, and the environment. UC Davis researchers collaborate and innovate in California and around the globe to find transformational solutions. It's all part of the university's mission to promote quality of life for all living things. Find out more at 21stCentury.ucdavis.edu. This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars. Get this idea out of your head. A stamp is not a tiny painting. Somebody might be able to do a great painting

20 by 30 inches, but you take that down to one inch by one and a half inches, and it's a challenge to make it work. And Ethel Kessler is just one of a handful of people who take on that challenge. I'm Ethel Kessler. Ethel's one of just five art directors responsible for churning out every single stamp issued by the United States Postal Service each year. And I've been doing that for 15 years.

Those bonsai stamps that just came out with the tiny little beautiful meticulous, detailed drawings of trees, those are hers. And our reporter there is Postal Service in Stamp Enthusiast, Julie Shapiro. Most people think of stamps and then picture flags or the Liberty Bell or the word love spelled in a cutesy font. But there are so many other stamps made every year. What about those abstract expression of stamps that were all sorts of awkward sizes, or the muppets that were out in a white background

and seem to be bursting out of the envelopes? And those new pine ears of industrial design stamps? Oh my goodness. And I loved the cloud stamps. If you looked at the sheet, they're laid out in the exact same layers they exist in the sky. Every year, there are artful stamps, there are poetic stamps, there are stamps

with senses of humor, even surprising stamps. It's just that you don't really see those ones, you just see the flags, the bells, and the love. Stamps take on average a year to a year and a half from conception to execution. I can just tell you that this process is never succinct. Basically, the art directors pull together the stamps once the subject matter has been picked. But as Ethel mentioned, it's a long process. It starts with public suggestions for stamp subjects mailed to the USPS.

Yes, stamp proposals must be submitted in writing. Damn right, you have to use a stamp. The first thing is the subject. And that is our other guest, his name is Terry McCaffrey. My name is Terry McCaffrey and I recently retired as the manager of stamp development for the U.S. Postal Services, stamp services office where I was in charge of designing all the postage stamps for the government. There are 50,000 suggestions a year that come in from the American public. Basically, all of those subject suggestions

have to be gone through and have to be reviewed by a committee. The committee is called the Citizen Stamp Advisory Committee. That's CSAC for short, CSAC. And that committee serves the Postmaster General. As you might imagine, CSAC has received some pretty far out suggestions over the years. We've received requests for hate stamps to combat the love stamps that we issue every year, one for the devil, one for the passing of the Great American outhouse. But luckily there are rules that help guide the committee in choosing the stamp subjects.

About a dozen rules. They primarily feature Americans. Births, anniversaries, significant contributions. Dead presidents usually get a stamp. Fittieth anniversary of historical events. Fiftyth anniversaries of statehood. No repeats within 50 years, accepting national symbols and holidays. Two hundredth anniversaries of university findings.

No disasters commemorated. Keep away from religion. No, they have honored, of course, Christmas. And there have been a few people such as Mother Theresa, but we're really honoring her for her humanitarian efforts, not for her religious orders or religious beliefs. And this one is interesting. Themes of widespread appeal that reflect the USA's inclusiveness.

In other words, something everyone will love. So being bold and controversial is not what stand-makers are going for, which I think you could view critically too. Although, you know, inclusiveness itself could be viewed as a radical notion to sum. But there's one more big rule, and we'll get to that in a minute. So the Citizen Stamp Advisory Committee follows these rules, picks the subjects, runs them by the Postmaster General, you know the Grand Poo Bob, the USPS. If he's not in favor of a stamp, it isn't going anywhere. But I think he usually defers to the committee, and assigns Bob, the USPS. If he's not in favor of a stamp, it isn't going anywhere.

But I think he usually differs to the committee and assigns them to the art directors. And then the art directors follow their own rules. And the number one thing to keep in mind around the stamp services office. Our mantra courtesy of one of the art directors, Howard Payne, was to keep it simple and look at it at stamp size.

But the art directors also consider a few other things. Keeping it bright and colorful and engaging and making the image something that people will want to put on their home ropes. What's the feeling you want to evoke? What emotions do you want to evoke? The social awareness stamps as we refer to them are the most difficult stamps to reduce

because you have to create an abstract concept and sell it to the American public. And there's one stamp that's been wildly successful in this. Both Terry and Ethel cited it independently. The first stamp that I have to mention... Dear to my heart for many reasons. It also happened to be the first stamp that was issued that I, our director, was a breast cancer stamp.

Not only is it a great graphic design and illustration, but it also was a fabulous message stamp. And that stamp was also the first time in the country that the U.S. did a stamp that raised money for a cause in addition to the postage. Because you pay an extra 8 cents on the average to purchase each one of the stamps. That stamp, which went on sale in 1998. And it's still on sale after all these years. And it's raised about $73 million for breast cancer research.

Just looking at the stamp from the lower left to the upper right, it goes from dark colors into bright colors, layered with a line drawing of the goddess Diana. Reaching over her shoulder to reach for an arrow in her quiver. Which also has an ingenious resemblance to the line drawn cartoons from those doctor's office pamphlets that explained how to give a self-pressed exam. Where her one bare breast would have been, they had removed that and put in a slogan,

fun the fight, find a cure. So it was a brilliant design. But not all social awareness stamps are wildly successful. I think one of the biggest examples of a stamp gone wrong as many years ago before I joined the group, there was a stamp out alcoholism. But unfortunately, it was one of the biggest failures we ever had because when the message was sent to another person, that person received it and got the impression that the sender was saying, you're an alcoholic, you need help. And they found that offensive, so that's damp, did not work. As technology pulls us deeper into electronic correspondence

and away from snail mail. A term the USPS hates, by the way. The USPS has lost billions of dollars, but it's trying to keep up and stay relevant. To that end, in the fall of 2011, they changed one of the biggest rules governing stamp subject selection. It used to be that first you had to be dead long enough

to be on a stamp. And there were lots of reasons for that. In the beginning, they had to be dead 10 years. They shifted that to five. And as most people know, they've just shifted that to even living people can be on stamps. Now you have to start looking and saying, who's the first one? I had a feeling Terry knew the answer to that one.

Yes, I do, but I'm not at liberty to say. It will not be Lady Gaga. See, when the USPS changed the deceased's subject rule to allow living people on stamps, they asked the public to nominate someone for the first living stamp. Tragically, nominations were accepted online. No stamps required. And besides Bob Dylan and at the time, living Steve Jobs, yep, Lady Gaga was right there near the top of the list.

I said, well, you get what you ask for. Not that Lady Gaga is bad. I love her music. I just think it's a little premature to put her on a stand. This open call for the first living person, I see Eric can view it as kind of a gimmick to get people excited about the post office and get Lady Gaga fans to buy stamps.

It will not be Lady Gaga. A boy can dream, can he? But for the people who design stamps, sure they want you to buy them. But when you talk to them immediately, you know there's so much more to it to them than that. As Ethel puts it, stamps tell the story of America in pictures. You work on these things so long and put so much into it. Heart and soul.

That you just feel like in the end, it has to be right. It's for the American public. That's who we're doing this for. And I just want it to be right. It's something that touches every person in the United States. And it's a product that I help develop and I think that to me is just wonderful and I'm honored to have been part of it. Oh, PS.

In my opinion, 45 cents, the current rate for a first class stamp, is an entirely reasonable amount to pay for a tiny work of art that escorts your letter all the way across the country. I completely agree. For 45 cents, I wouldn't take your letter up stairs. And I'm going there anyway. Selection 13. Postal worker is canceling stamps at the University of Ghana Post Office. 99% Invisible was produced this week by Julie Shapiro, the artistic director of the third coast international audio festival. I've been telling people I want to get on the Citizen Stamp Advisory Committee. I've been new life goal. That's what I've taken from this little radio project. And believe me, I asked how to do it. I've got some awards to win, apparently. It's not going to happen anytime soon, but I'm working on it. And it was produced by me and Roman Mars with support

from Lunar, making a difference with creativity. It's a project of KALW-91.7 local public radio in San Francisco, and the American Institute of Architects in San Francisco. We're distributed by PRX, the public radio exchange making public radio more public, more at PRX.org. This week and every week I'm aided and embedded by Sam Greenspan. You can find the show and like the show on Facebook. I tweet at Roman Mars, but you can always tell me what your favorite stamp is and who you'd like to see on the first living person stamp at 99%invisible.org.

Hey everyone, I have one more message. If you're new here, go ahead and download all the old episodes and try them out because they're all short, they're all evergreen, and I think you'll like them. Also, I want to thank everyone for all the Twitter mentions and Facebook sharing and ratings and reviews on iTunes. They're so amazing. You are the entirety of my marketing department. So I really need you. No pressure. But I just appreciate everything you've done so far. So thanks so much. And all right, I'm getting dangerously close to having a thousand ratings on iTunes.

For a dude who does this independently at night in his bedroom, I think that that is amazing. So that really pleases me. So thank you so much for being so kind. And I'll keep making up some. Thanks. Bye. I'm not going to be a little bit more serious. I'm not going to be a little bit more serious. I'm not going to be a little bit more serious. I'm not going to be a little bit more serious.

I'm not going to be a little bit more serious. Thank you.