USPS Underground Railroad Stamps
The USPS is coming out with a collection of stamps honoring the efforts of 10 Americans who were part of the Underground Railroad.
The U.S. Postal Service is honoring 10 courageous men and women who helped guide enslaved people to freedom via the Underground Railroad, network of secret routes and safehouses in use before the Civil War.
Love the design. The stamps honor Catherine Coffin, Frederick Douglass, Thomas Garrett, Laura Haviland, Lewis Hayden, Harriet Jacobs, William Lambert, the Rev. Jermain Loguen, William Still, and Harriet Tubman. They go on sale March 9th and if you want, you can attend the first first-day-of-issue event at the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitor Center in Church Creek, MD.
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I also really like the design. It's interesting as my first-glance instinct was "eek, is it live laugh love?" but in the end I really appreciate the way the words complement the portraits, almost like a poem. I think just generally I really enjoy stamp design, and the freedom in constraint.
appreciate the way the typography uses the sepia vintage photographs as a starting point to create a color gradient vs if they had colorized the photos, which is far too common
I'd love to hear more about their selection process. At first I was surprised not to see Levi Coffin, as he so often gets attention, but then looked up to see that Catherine was his wife. I'm sure she deserves it. It's not like Levi was helping thousands while she blithely churned butter. But her Wikipedia page is pretty bare on facts.
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