Stamp set

Stamp set!

First project of the year is to design a group of four stamps! We were advised to celebrate something British and take the project seriously as though we could have them published. It didn't take me long to decide on the idea of celebrating prison officers as my dad is one and I personally value him a hero, He has saved many lives and just because those lives in particular are of inmates the 'saving lives' part seems to be wrote off and not valued. I don't personally think this is very fair, people either judge the job due to bad portrayal in the media or simply ignore that it plays a massive part in keeping the public safe.
I am very passionate in this subject choice and although it may be a controversial and difficult one to pursue, I would like to research the topic further and hopefully come out with some lovely stamps celebrating the men and women that dedicate their time to looking after others.

HMPS (His majesty's prison service)

As my dad works as a prison officer I know a fair bit more than the average person about the subject. I plan on talking to him a lot about the job also to help come up with ideas too.

Royal mail stamps

This stamp set is a si

I honestly only added this alongside my research because I found it funny how I wouldn't consider transformers a 'serious' topic for stamps and yet here is a set that was released officially in September this year.
Although transformers isn't as serious a topic as heroes of the pandemic say, it is interesting to see how the rendering and backing of these stamp sets can make it look just as professional and serious.

Already existing stamp set examples.

War propaganda In the UK.

While trying to come up with an inspiration for what style to take forward I thought about using war propaganda and thought it could be quite fitting as a starting point. War posters took something violent and gritty and produced art that was pleasant to look at from it. I suppose this is what I will have to do with my stamps (although on a much smaller scale) There is no glory in a prison officers job and so creating illustrations that look pleasant and in no way violent may prove easier while looking at these kinds of images as inspiration.

Philip Zec

Phillip Zec was the artist behind the 'come into the factories' poster above, I really liked to look off it and decided to look into his work further and was pleasantly surprised to find he was a cartoonist for the daily mail. This fits into this project even better as he would've had to

Prison officers.

Prison officers are just normal people that do an important job. Katia Segor, a supervising officer in one of the videos below put nicely "Yes the job does have challenges but I work with fellow human beings". I think I would rather show the humanity it takes to work this kind of job

Go home every day knowing what you did matters from MoJ Justice Jobs on Vimeo.

The forgotten service.

While doing my research I came across this phrase a lot "The forgotten service". The more you look into it the more you feel terrible about how little recognition prison officers got for doing their job.

Link to website

This woman talking in this video really hit me hard, it basically shown me someone who has the same strong views about the prison service except unfortunately the hardships are much closer to home as she lost her partner to suicide due to the stresses of working for the prison service. This video is basically a plea for people to appreciate those who work in the prison and stop viewing them as "the forgotten service" here are a couple quotes I took from the short video.

"All you see when you drive past is some big ass walls"
"not payed well for what they do"
"cant talk about it because of the secrets act"
"its really sad that society doesn't see prison staff as important as nhs etc"
"constantly forgotten"
"dont talk about it in the media"
"people need that pat on the back"
"literally known as the forgotten service"
"this job changes people"

Strong visuals.

I asked my dad about if he gets any recognition for the job he does and he mentioned his medal so I asked for some pictures of it. This is a medal all prison officers got after being in the job publicly for 5 years, This is what the royal uk website described.

Prison services personnel who are publicly employed and are regularly exposed to difficult and sometimes emergency situations that have completed five full calendar years of service on 6 February 2022.

Being a prison officer is so hard that the rate of people staying in the job for 5 years is enough to earn a medal, there is another medal I know of that you gain after 20 years of service, this is exclusively to prison officers..
I thought this was a very strong image considering what it represents.

Jubilee medal awarded for 5 years of service:

Long service and good conduct medal awarded after 20 years of service :

Here I have an image of my dads epaulettes, I thought this could be considered another strong image as each prison officer wears them to identify themselves individually in the prison. The prison officers uniform is very similar to a police officers uniform, it is very formal.

Uniform etc:

Thumbnailing ideas.

After sketching these rough ideas I decided to copy and paste them out a few times on screen so that I could play with the colour scheme. As I am basing the colours off of the uniform, that was the easy part. The hardest part I found was inclusivity. I want to represent prison officers as a whole, not just men officers or women officers, black or white etc. This was proving difficult with the level of simplicity I had decided on for my designs. I took a short break and when I came back I decided to scrap these ideas as im certain I can make stronger ones.

Having a rethink.

Honestly I wasn't happy with how my stamps were beginning to turn out, I thought they looked rather bland and I was struggling with the idea of inclusivity within the artwork itself. I was putting pressure on including all the types of people that work as prison officers I couldn't nearly fit that much information onto four small stamps.
That's when the idea hit me to focus more on the tools and items all prison officers have and use, objects have no gender or race and everyone has to use the same things such as the uniform and prison equipment.
Another thing I decided on to get the creativity flowing and not just copy the last ideas was to change the orientation. Working landscape will force me to think of new solutions to my problems with the design aspect of this project.

I decided to use pen and ink as my weapon of choice with this task as although it may take a little longer I know from past experience, the outcome will look much cleaner and more professional. After all I am in the third year and I want to strive to have all of my work looking as professional as possible. Here you can see the sketch I did of the cuffs, (Which will be used for one of my stamp designs) Then the pen work. I took this and shrank it down to double check it would still be readable small scale and I think although you of course lose some of the detail, the final result is lovely. If I continue all of my sketches for this task in this style I think it could turn out great.

Although I like how the pen drawings turned out unfortunately they didn't transition to digital as smoothly as Id have hoped. The cuffs worked when shrunk down digitally but with the more complex shapes I had drawn here It wasn't looking so clear. I was hoping by having the images shrunk it would hide any flaws they had but it in fact did the opposite and brought them to light.
I still plan on using these drawings as bases for working on top of digitally.

First stamp development.

I wanted to show more in depth how these stamps are developed as I go along with the first one here. I started with the initial placement of the drawings and then began to add colour and detail. After this I decided the gap between the images was far too wide, I didn't like the width of the rectangle I had to work in regardless so I decided to add a banner alongside the stamp to place the monarchs profile and eventually price.

First look at the stamps together.

I am incredibly happy with how these are turning out so far!

My final four designs:

Playing with borders:

Out of the possible ideas I have shown above, my favourite is probably the square 'castle' border. I think it looks different to the usual stamp border and stands out a fair bit also.