originally posted on SCAMP
An Post have released their 2008 greetings booklet featuring 2 stamps designed and illustrated by Steve Simpson.
I was very happy with my initial direction, unfortunately the design committee in An Post felt they were a little too complicated and should be less occasion specific. The gold fish design being too birthday orientated. The booklet of stamps needs to cover a range of occasions; Anniversaries, Birthdays (young & old), Thank You, Good Luck, Congratulations or even just a letter to say Hello. So the design needed to be more general.
My next set of roughs were based on felt toys. Clean basic graphic shapes with lots of colour and texture.
Luckily they liked this direction. They selected the frog and the elephant to develop, I had hoped they go for the monkey.
I used scanned fabrics and textures in Photoshop and added dashed lines to simulate stitching (as my needle work isn't what it used to be). The stamps are created at 1200 dpi.
I was great to be able to use the monkey on the cover for the 10 stamp booklet.
And a cat in a hot air balloon for the first-day-cover
you can see the texture and stitching on the close-up.
I also got to design the cancellation stamp for the first day cover.
