Color inspiration from some recent stamp designs. Two series by graphic designer Gavin Potenza entitled 'A Field Guide to: the Stamps of the World' and 'Homage to the Stamp'. Along with a New Zealand heritage collection of the alphabet of cultural icons.

AtoZ of New Zealand

Here's some color inspiration from vintage record sleeves collected by artist Kavel Rafferty, who has some nice work of her own as well. This collection takes us through a selection of sleeves from some of the most prominent international record companies of the time, and gives us an idea of their focus on design even behind the album cover...

No other color in modern history has carried such gravitas when it comes to associations with masculinity, femininity and politics. The color pink a vessel for weighty subject material, indeed. Especially when you consider the fact that it has only been around in its proper form for less than 500 years. Who knows what the future for this light shade of red will hold, but this info graphic created by Voltage Creative covers the last hundred years of politics and pop culture in all things pink.

Click to scroll the full graphic.

Since the first self adhesive stamp (the Penny Black, made in 1840 featuring the bust of Queen Victoria) stamp designs have been one of the most highly visible designs in society, one that is particularly important since it represents the nation it comes from.

Today we are featuring some stamps from around the world that you will probably never come across, and if you did you would be quite happy because of their value, along with info about the history of stamp design.

The most common types of stamp designs are Portrait bust, Emblem, Numeric, or Pictorial.

Color & Stamps

Although multi-color printing was always possible, and may be seen on the earliest stamps of Switzerland, the process was slow and expensive, and most stamps were in one or two colors until the 1960s.

World's Most Valuable Stamps

Post Office Mauritius, 1847 It is estimated that fewer than 30 individual copies of these stamps have survived and they are valued at between $600,000 or more depending on the condition of the particular stamp being sold. In 1993 a cover bearing 2 of these stamps sold for a whopping $3.8 million, the highest price ever paid any philatelic item.

Sweden Three Skilling Banco, Yellow Color Error, 1855 The three skilling stamp (yellow color error) was issued in Sweden in 1855. Due to a printing error, this stamp is printed on yellow colored paper (meant for the eight skilling stamp of the same set) instead of the usual green color (used for the three skilling stamp). One copy of the yellow error variety of this stamp was found in 1885 by a young Swedish boy in his grandfather's collection.It is a one-of -a- kind rarity, as no other copies have been discovered to date. In 1996 the stamp was sold to an anonymous collector for $2.3 million at auction.

U.S. Franklin Z-Grill, 1867 This stamp is the rarest of all U.S. stamps, as only 2 copies are known to exist. These stamps depict a portrait of Benjamin Franklin and are embossed with a "Z-Grill" - being a pattern of tiny squares embossed into the paper and visible on the back of the stamps. The purpose of the "Z-Grill" was to permit the canceling ink to be absorbed into the stamp paper thus preventing those who wanted to cheat the post from washing out cancellation marks.The use of "Z-Grills" was not found to be practical and the practice was soon discontinued. An 1868 1 cent "Z-Grill" stamp sold for $930,000 in 1988.

Here's some color inspiration by way of 1920 - 1940's Japan in the form of matchbox labels. Thanks to Mariad for sharing her grandfather's wonderful collection in this Flickr set. If you enjoy these Mariad, recommends the book "Matchbox Label Collection 1920s-40s." To see more Japanese matchbox labels check out this link.

Branding is an important part of any political campaign, but just as we rarely see candidates stray from the politics of their parties... rarely do we see them stray from the red, white and blue palette when branding their campaigns. However, there have been a few that have embraced other colors like yellow, green, black and variations of the standard U.S. blue. Today, we're taking a look at some of the earliest colored political campaign posters, and the posters of those candidates who have strayed from the usual palette.

Early U.S. Campaign Posters: 1844 - 1896

Grand National, Democratic banner 1844

Grand National, Whig banner 1848

Zachary Taylor, the nation's choice... 1847

Grand National, Democratic banner 1852

Grand National Republican banner 1856

Grand National Union banner 1864

National Democratic chart 1876

James A. Garfield & Chester A. Arthur 1880

With a long and colorful history that dates back to the 60's, concert posters have moved far beyond their roots of simply informing people of when a band was playing, into a full scale art movement with shows of their own dedicated to the art.

Here are 20 colorful concert posters from some of my favorite designers and printers in the scene.

Delicious Design League

Delicious Design League

Delicious Design League

Delicious Design League

Delicious Design League

Steve Walters

It's no big surprise that the art world tends to favor the left leaning candidate during a campaign, but what might be more surprising about this years election is the sheer number of artists who are rallying around and using their talents to support Barack Obama.

Well known artist like Shepard Fairey, Ron English, and so on... have brought the most attention to the 'Art for Obama' phenomenon, which is documented nicely in this Wall Street Journal Article, but it's not only well known artist showing their support with great design and art. The Obama camp itself brought in 29 pages of great designs in an open submission for their Tees by the People campaign, and Etsy has nearly 2000 items tagged Obama, not to mention the almost 10,000 items on Ebay. Obviously campaigns are big business for everyone, but the outpouring of support by the U.S. art and design community has made this one of the most colorful campaigns in history.

Here are 12 palettes inspired by many of these wonderful prints. By the way, today is the last day to register to vote.

Digital art is only in its infancy and already we have seen so many great examples of amazing work. It is hard to imagine what we will see as this medium continues to develope and the images and colors become even more unbelievable...

Here are some of the more colorful videos and images created using one of the programs making this art possible, processing.

Processing is an open source programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and interactions. It is an open project initiated by Ben Fry and Casey Reas, and it can be freely downloaded from www.processing.org.

Videos

Another lovely flickr set from Joe Kral inspired this post (the last two can be seen here & here). This time we're taking a look at the premiere issues of some of the best design magazines.