Bristol creates the Christmas stamps
No one can be in any doubt about the pantomime theme to one of the two sets of Christmas stamps produced by the Royal Mail this year. But few people posting greetings this festive season are likely to realise that these stamps had their beginnings in Bristol.
They are actually the creation of a Bristol-based company. The images were taken by a photographer based in the city and many of the people posing on the stamps are locals, whose appearance had been transformed by a Bristol-based makeup artist.
So why the Bristol connection? It all comes down to Steve Haskins, the creative director and founder of So Design, which is based in a converted barn on the eastern outskirts of the city.
"I've always wanted to design a stamp," he explains. "It's a designer's dream, I suppose, to get your work out there and seen – and our work will be seen on millions of stamps this Christmas."
Steve collected stamps as a schoolboy. "My nan got me into it," he says. "She used to buy me the First Day Covers. They have fantastic artwork and I can understand why so many people collect them."
Shona Kitson, account director at So Design, takes up the story, saying: "Steve said to me one day that he wanted to design a stamp. So I got in touch with the Royal Mail and showed them our portfolio and it went from there."
The Royal Mail invited So Design to tender for work, and it soon won the contract for the First Day Cover presentation folder for the Madonna And Child series of Christmas stamps in 2005.
The company also designed the First Day Cover presentation folder for the Angels stamps of Christmas 2007.
In September 2007, So Design was invited to tender for the Christmas 2008 stamps on the theme of Pantomime. The company won the contract to design the stamps, and was also awarded the contract to create the First Day Cover presentation material.
"Being chosen to design Christmas stamps is really the highest accolade, as these are the biggest sellers for the Royal Mail," says Steve, 44, who lives in Wick.
"The stamps we've produced are quite unusual, as the Royal Mail doesn't usually show photographs of people on stamps, but illustrations of people from history.
"But although the people in these stamps are real, they're heavily made up into pantomime characters."
Steve reveals that most of the characters in the stamps are not portrayed by full-time models.
"We felt it was important to use ordinary people as you get something from them that you don't from professional models," he says. "What we were looking for was people who were characters in their own right and who could act a bit – and the people we chose were all brilliant. As soon as they got into their costumes they were completely in character. It made our job a lot easier, because we didn't have to prompt them to do things."
In fact, the biggest difficulty the design team encountered was with the costumes.
Shona explains: "We did the shoot during the panto season, so it was really difficult getting costumes as most of them were already in use. We ended up having to hire some of the costumes from as far away as Manchester and London."
After the photo session, the team at So Design worked on the images to add layers of detail and colour that feature in all its work.
Wasn't it rather frustrating for Steve to put so much work into such a small item? He replies that, in fact, it was an incredible challenge.
"You've got to get so much focus and energy into such a small area," he says. "You have to pay close attention to detail and colour, and get used to looking at things in a very small scale. You end up doing things like moving a star by a millimetre."
The Royal Mail has also issued a set of Christmas stamps this year with a more traditional religious theme featuring historical Madonna And Child paintings by William Dyce and Lippo di Dalmasio
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