New Presorted Standard stamps display beautiful American landscapes

SAN DIEGO — Today, the U.S. Postal Service released America Vistas, two new Presorted Standard stamps, at the San Diego Stamp Show. These two stamps, intended for use by business mail users, evoke the beauty, variety and vastness of our country’s natural spaces.

Greg Breeding, an art director for USPS, designed the stamps using art from DKNG Studios. “For Presorted Standard stamps, we like to showcase broadly appealing imagery from across America,” says Breeding. “These two paintings have a kind of Americana feel by displaying both mountains and the shore, both iconic to the American landscape. Because of their unique design style and use of color, the images come off as very fresh and engaging.”

To the American mind, nature has been seen as a healing force. The landscape has often symbolized freedom, individualism and unlimited possibility. Perhaps that is why two favorite vacation destinations for Americans are the wide-open spaces and long vistas of the beach and the mountains. These stamps highlight both. Seen side by side, the two stamps form a pleasing pattern of spare, curving lines; triangular forms; and alternating colors.

One stamp depicts a sandy shoreline at sunset, with a lone sailboat in the distance. The other is a nighttime mountain scene, featuring a small, secluded cabin overlooking a lake. The sweeping sky filling the upper half of the beach scene matches the lake in the bottom half of the mountain scene. The stamps share a horizon line at a halfway point in each design, which “in turn helps to create a balanced composition, and a sense of calm in the art,” says Nathan Goldman, a principal with DKNG Studios.

The American Vistas Presorted Standard stamps will be sold in self-adhesive coils of 3,000 and 10,000.

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