USPS Pinback Button Postage Stamps
Five years ago we had the amazing honor of creating our first postage stamps for USPS, so it’s with great excitement that we announce a new postage stamp we designed that are out in the world as of their first day of issue - August 15, 2024. We had the pleasure of working again under the talented art direction of Greg Breeding and alongside several of our favorite artists who each created one of the 10 typographic designs in the set. We also had the opportunity to work on the templates for the buttons themselves including their three-dimensional appearance and the actual pin fasteners that appear on the back of the pane of stamps.
Each pinback button in the series is adorned with a single upbeat message, with the DKNG designed stamp exclaiming ‘Kudos!’. For our design we wanted to take a script lettering approach with decorative flourishes to add some pomp and circumstance to the congratulatory message.
The first-day-of-issue event for these Forever stamps took place at the Great American Stamp Show in Hartford, CT on Thursday, August 15, at 11am ET.
If you happen to pickup the new pinback button stamps at your local post office, be sure to tag DKNG! Check out our initial sketch of the Kudos! design below along with images of the stamps themselves.
USPS Press Release
Since their appearance in 1896, pinback buttons have expressed viewpoints, made statements and shown off the interests of those who wear them. A novel medium, these buttons quickly came into popular use as advertising tools and for political campaigns. For more than 120 years, pinback buttons of various sizes have helped spread ideas and broadcast opinions on a wide variety of topics.
The designs and slogans adorning buttons reflect the era and values of the time in which they were created, like any other piece of pop culture ephemera. In this way, pinback buttons become historical tools providing insight into the moods, sentiments and worldviews of people living in a particular time and place.
Pinback Buttons is a pane of 20 stamps featuring 10 typographic designs by various artists in their own signature style. Each design imparts a single upbeat message: smile (Don Clark), hello! (Tré Seals), peace (Jay Fletcher), love (Juan Carlos Pagan), fun (Gia Graham), sweet (Jeff Rogers), yes! (Ryan Feerer), cheers! (Lisa Congdon), kudos! (DKNG Studios) and happy (Gina Triplett). The round shape of the stamps, and the shadowing and reflection effects used, give the appearance of three-dimensional pinback buttons. The pane verso features an illustration of a round silver button back with pin fastener repeated 20 times, one for each pinback button shown on the front of the pane.
