"Forget-me-not": 4th Dutch Design issue

Dutch flag Written in: Dutch • redactie •
Forget-me-notOn September 26, 2022, PostNL is issuing the "Forget-me-not" stamp sheet featuring six stamps for international use, designed by Audrey Large. The French-born Large works in Schiedam. She is the winner of the 2021 Young Designers Award, with the positive description in the jury report: “With this new visual language, she is right on top of the zeitgeist and makes the blurring of boundaries between the digital and the physical tangible.” Audrey was particularly surprised and intrigued by PostNL’s request to design the 2022 Dutch Design issue: “After all, I am not a graphic designer! But PostNL was particularly interested in my exceptional visual language of 3D objects!”

Stamp sheet "Forget-me-not", first day of issue is Monday, September 26, 2022

Leaf Forget-me-not The print run of the stamp sheet amounts to 80.000 sheets. In a partnership of Audrey Large en Koos Breen This stamp sheet was produced by the printing company Koninklijke Joh. Enschedé BV in Haarlem. The description 'Forget-me-not' does not refer to the flower, but is much more a commentary on the phenomenon of postage stamps and the way we use letters or cards,' says Audrey Large: “After all, sending mail essentially means saying: will you think of me? It emphasizes the meaning of the request not to want to be forgotten. It is as if you almost hear the voice of someone speaking to you through letters.” In the bottom left corner of the stamp sheet, 'Forget-me-not' is placed between 'guillemets' (two opposing V-shapes on either side of the word), which function as quotation marks in Romance languages, such as French. With this, Audrey Large, who works in Schiedam, refers to her French heritage.

Analysis of stamp sheet with 3D images

Forget-me-not [1]
  1. The head (1st stamp top left) of the imaginative, futuristic, multi-headed, and digitally rendered 3D mythical creature is connected to the animal body by a giraffe-like neck. It is worth noting here that the neck and torso are not placed on stamps, but on tabs on the left and the bottom margin of the sheet.
  2. A flower-like protrusion extends the head (1st stamp). Two flower-like protrusions enable the mythical creature on the margin of the sheet to move.
  3. From the body sprouts a second neck parallel to the first neck across the middle of the stamp sheet (partially on the 1st and 3rd, and partly on the 2nd and 4th stamps). Attached to this second neck are protrusions in the form of archetypal vases and pots in various glossy colors. These protrusions have ended up on the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th stamps.  Forget-me-not [2] Forget-me-not [3] Forget-me-not [4] Forget-me-not [5] Forget-me-not [6] The arrangement of the stamps does not correspond to that of the stamp sheet. Due to the new orientation, in my estimation, the images on the stamps appear better and are recognizable.
  4. The protrusion on the 6th stamp is connected to the animal's body by a link in a wondrously ingenious way.
  5. The long horn (2nd stamp) continues via the adjacent tab onto the top margin of the sheet, where it crosses the short horn.
  6. The 3D image floats in and/or travels through a free, boundless space within the universe with an undulating color gradient that creates a sense of up and down. In contrast to these stamp images, countless depictions of Audrey are executed against a solid, monochrome background.

Help and assistance

During the realization of the stamp sheet featuring six different stamp images, Audrey Large realized she needed the help and assistance of a graphic designer to make the final sheet design print-ready. After consultation, advisor Koos Breen was soon asked to further develop the typography in a creative collaboration. Typographic information has been added in a separate layer, combining text and image into an attractive unity through the oval shape. Breen: “My intention is to literally embrace every object on the stamp with an open circle by having the text circle around it. The light blue line behind it reinforces that effect. The circle is open, floats, and adds movement through the varying width of the line. It has become an image in itself, acting as a connection between object and typography.”

Danne & Blackburn, NY, USA, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

“For the right typeface, I based it on the curves at the corners of the 'N' to which the old NASA logo belongs, because Audrey spoke repeatedly about space, travel, and floating. Thus, the typography has been given a voice of its own, both in form and content, with the aim of allowing the various elements to merge,” says Koos Breen. Audrey is particularly pleased with the placement of the text: “This creates progress and continuity in motion. At the same time, it has a solemn character, as if someone has put a stamp on the postage stamp.”

Audrey Large's motives

Audrey Large's knowledge, vision, and background, which play a dominant leading role for her in computer, film, and artistic-technical aspects (along with the associated terminology), far exceed my capacity to grasp at my age. Hence, I am providing here with insightful characteristics for insiders, which I have taken from the PostNL press release 'Postzegelnieuws'. I hope and expect that my role as a 'pass-through' will be enlightening for a large number of stamp blog readers, allowing this stamp sheet to become optimally visually appealing thanks to Audrey Large's wonderfully intuitive 3D software visualizations with 3D printers.

Previous Dutch Design issues

  1. PostNL has previously issued a stamp sheet with the value denomination for mail to international destinations featuring six different images in: * 2019 'Gewoontjes' designer Michiel Schuurman (nvph 3791/96). * 2020 'Kaleidoscope' designer Hansje van Halem (nvph 3875/80). * 2021 'Talk with the hand' designer Bart de Baets (nvph ***). These issues are part of the 'Dutch Design' series, which draws international attention to the progressive experimental design of artists / designers from our country.
  2. 2) For several years, PostNL has been paying tribute to winners or nominees of prestigious design competitions by giving them a free assignment to design stamps. In doing so, they are allowed to be guided entirely by their own interests, by what moves and fascinates them. In other words, personal fascination is clearly and convincingly at the forefront. The limitations they are required to adhere to are the design guidelines for the stamp.

Tit for tat!

As I argued previously in 2021 regarding the release of the Dutch Design emission 'Praat met de hand', a request from PostNL to design a stamp is an honorable commission. The relatively young typographic designer is making a name for himself with this. In doing so, PostNL upholds the spirit of the saying 'You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours'! In other words, the design costs of an aesthetically high-quality product turn out to be relatively low. After all, business is trading and negotiating!

13 comments

  5. I'm not going to subject my foreign friends to this. I will buy a few extra sheets with bees from last year and William I from this year instead. It actually goes well with the three earlier Dutch Design sheets; those looked terrible too.

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  7. I think it's a beautiful stamp, but I might be biased 🙂
    It is great that the design has been reviewed and studied so thoroughly, Bate.
    Two questions:
    -I don't quite understand that "quid pro quo." Have you been given insight into what we were paid, and to what extent does that differ from our "older" colleagues (Hansje, Bart, and I are all in our forties)?
    -Could you please double-check our names? It is Schuurman and de Baets instead of Schuurmans and de Baes.

    Keep up the good work! It is a shame that this series is so unpopular with some collectors, but I really enjoy reading the reviews.

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  8. About Audrey's seal
    I think I'll venture into an analysis of this stamp myself. I am currently in bed due to surgery on my big toe (wear good shoes, people!) and that's why I'm a bit bored.

    It should not get any crazier
    What strikes me first about the stamp is the strange visual language. What are these shapes? Are they plants, animals, objects? Are we looking at vases or through a microscope? Every time you see a recognizable detail, you are immediately thrown off balance by another aspect of the same object. The elements are simultaneously organic AND manufactured. Animalistic AND mechanical. At first glance, it seems like total chaos until you realize that the grid of the stamp sheet presses some parts into place, as it were. Personally, I find this to be the cleverness of this design. It is very difficult to suggest something spontaneous and organic while simultaneously respecting the boundaries of the edges. Despite this added difficulty, the entire stamp sheet remains beautifully balanced in terms of composition.

    What I also find remarkable about the design is that it is extremely spacious. There is an enormous amount of depth to the whole. You look right through everything, as it were. It is very difficult to achieve this on such a small surface. It is Audrey's signature. It is Audrey's signature, but certainly also the signature of her approach to the computer.

    The computer is both a blessing and a curse for the designer. On the one hand, there are of course all the advantages (speed, easy editing, copying, fonts, etc.); on the other hand, the computer is primarily only good at one thing, and that is drawing rectangles and circles. It is incredibly difficult to create organic and spontaneous things. Audrey has developed a technique in which she, as it were, forces the computer to let itself be molded like clay. She is not alone in this; many artists are working with this technique, but she is distinctly good at it. We are witnessing one of the very latest developments in the field of digital art here. I don't know if that is necessarily beautiful (I think so, but as has often been said on this blog: tastes differ); it is, at the very least, interesting.

    The question remains: What are they? Well, I understand that within the visual language of standard stamps, this series of “thingies” stamps is difficult to categorize. On the other hand, it isn't actually that difficult to complete your collection of “thingies” issues. There aren't that many different editions 😉

    That is perhaps also the beauty of a sheet like this. It perhaps beautifully illustrates the tension between what a collector wants (clarity) and what this designer is trying to do (a different perspective).

    What a terrible disappointment again
    For me, as a graphic designer, the history of the postage stamp is above all the history of graphic design. The Netherlands has a rich history of very opinionated designers, and they have all created stamps that, in my opinion, have led to quite heated discussions in the collectors' world (the Crouwel numeral stamp!). It might be interesting to know that these discussions are not limited to the collectors' world. Among designers, too, some of these designs and their underlying visions have led to major debates and schisms. A design can be a proposition, as it were: you can agree with it or disagree, but a good discussion is always worth something.

    It might be fun for a future project to take a closer look at the most controversial stamps. I am curious to see which designs split the church right in two.

    That's all for now. Kind regards, Michiel

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  9. Thanks, Michiel, for your very interesting analysis. It is wonderfully enlightening to read a graphic designer's thoughts on this.
    I am also a big fan of this sheet, as well as all the others in this series. They are all designs that you keep looking at, and time and again you can discover something different or simply conclude that a 'challenging' design is so much nicer than just letting some animal and plant photos roll off the presses again. We are already bombarded with that, so long live originality, and may this series continue for a long time.

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  10. Thanks, Michiel, for your thorough and interesting analysis of these new stamps. For me, these thoughts add to the whole as well. I really appreciate those Dutch Design issues.

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  11. What Michiel, Arjan, and Ed overlook is what a stamp is for. And that is to deliver a letter from A to B, not to send around graphic blunders.

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  12. Then there isn't much left. Personally, I find the King's regular postage stamps a bigger graphic flop than this sheet. And I could name a few more like that.
    I believe a stamp isn't even needed to get a letter from A to B anymore, so we can all stop collecting now and this blog can be shut down. Because apparently, we only collect 'beautiful, but very superfluous pictures'.
    Which is something I enjoy doing, but with pictures that interest me, and then we are back to this sheet.
    : )

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  13. FER – I think it’s best to tear the stamp off along the edges. You can moisten the rectangle on the back with your tongue. Now you can stick it in the top right corner of your envelope or postcard. If all goes well, you should be able to send the letter now. Let me know if it didn't work.

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