Stellar Stamps Shine

It's difficult not to be impressed by the Space Achievement and Innovation stamps from the United States Postal Service (USPS). The five pieces, available individually or collectively as an 11x38" uncut press sheet, include the nation's first holographic, circular, and pentagonal U.S. postage stamps.

The Printing Industries of America was so impressed with the Space Achievement and Innovation stamps that it presented their producer, Chantilly, Va.-based Sennett Security Products, with the "They Said It Couldn't Be Done" award at the 2001 Premier Print Awards ceremony held in September during the Print 01 event in Chicago.

Family-owned Sennett has been producing stamps for the USPS ever since the federal agency was privatized in 1978, says Sennett president Sandra Lane.

Creating the Space Achievement and Innovation stamps was a six-month project that drew upon the talents of several skilled artisans, including Richard Sheaff, a Scottsdale, Ariz.-based art director and typographer, and Fernando Catta-Preta, a computer animator, holographer, and president of Trace Holographic Art Design, Charlottesville, Va.

The stamps are visually distinguished from other holographic postage stamps in part because of the wizardry of Catta-Preta, who has more than 20 years of holographic art experience. Catta-Preta says he created the world's second holographic postage stamp, in 1989, for the government of Brazil. "It was Sandra Lane's idea that we include as many holographic techniques as possible in the stamps," he says. "She wanted us to show the state of the art with holographics."

Catta-Preta employed a half-dozen holographic methods. His own proprietary techniques involved the creation of holograms through the use of both computer-generated three-dimensional models and computer-animated sequences. No two holograms were alike, in that each was created with its own unique "quirk," Catta-Preta explains.

In the Landing on the Moon stamp, for instance, the holographic image that depicts the Apollo 11 module was created with the use of a miniature black-and-white model of the ship. The model was manipulated using three-dimensional computer graphics as well as via a color cycling technique that added red, orange, and yellow plumes to the Apollo 11's bottom, thereby creating the illusion that it actually was easing itself toward the surface of the moon.

The Space Achievement and Innovation postage stamps also involved the use of Sennett's proprietary printing equipment and techniques. First, Sennett printed the non-holographic art and text on press sheets, then applied the appropriate perforations, and finally laid down the holographic images.

Says Lane, "The Space Achievement stamps represent the first time a printer in the United States has applied pressure-sensitive holograms to preprinted press sheets in register with high tolerance."

Based in Columbus, Wis., American Packaging Corporation used inks from Flint Ink and Glatfelter's 60-lb. stamp paper to print a total of 30 million individual stamps and sheets on a nine-station Rotomec narrow-web 24"-wide press.

Sennett created the perforations and applied the holograms using a pair of custom-created perforation and application systems at its subsidiary, Unique Binders, Fredericksburg, Va., which also handled quality control processing, packaging, and distribution.

Since their debut last year at the World Stamp Expo 2000, the Space Achievement and Innovation stamps individually and collectively have sold briskly. Sennett says that the USPS has sold uncut press sheets, which includes all five stamps, almost as quickly as they had emerged from the printing press.

The press sheets, which sell for $38.50, are available via the USPS Web site at www.usps.gov.