Tag Archives: mail

The Long Way Round

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Three weeks ago, my brother-in-law dropped a letter in the mail to me, sending something that I needed but that wasn’t so valuable that express or certified mail was called for. Usually it takes about a week for a letter to make it from the United States to Bangkok. I waited and waited and finally gave up hope, calling Sunday to have a replacement sent to me, this time by express mail.

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The next day, the original letter arrived with a stamp on it: “Missent to Jakarta, Indonesia.” Could Alanis Morissette have worked that into her 1995 hit, Ironic? 

It’s like rain on your wedding day
It’s a free ride when you’ve already paid
It’s the parcel post that goes the Jakarta way
Who would’ve thought… it figures

What do you think?

 

Air Mail Stamps Part 2

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In early February I shared 14 designs I had created for “air mail” stamps and stickers.  Since I’m a fan of letter writing, I thought it would be fun to have some diversity in terms of how I indicate that my letters and postcards should travel first class air mail.

You were all very generous in providing your feedback and after taking your feedback to heart, I selected two designs to turn into rubber stamps and four designs to turn into stickers.

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The marks of the rubber stamps (obviously)

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And the stickers.  The quality of the printing is pretty poor.  They just used adhesive paper run through a color laser printer.  But it is a good first batch and I’ll seek out a higher-quality printer in the future.  Considering that I now have something like 400 stickers, that won’t be anytime soon!

Now, as to the topic of letter writing, just a reminder that April is National Card and Letter Writing Month.  If you haven’t used this low tech way of staying in touch in a while, why not make it a point to sit down a write a few letters to friends and loved ones?

 

Air Mail Stamps

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I have a love of stamps, especially air mail stamps.  There’s something romantic about envelopes bearing colorful and exotic stamps, and the receipt of a letter in a red- and blue-striped envelope with “par avion” marked on the outside holds all the promise of great adventure in foreign lands.

Many of you know that I write letters to my nieces for them to save and open when they turn 18.  Along the way, I send letters from different countries I journey to and ask at the post office here in Thailand for the latest and most interesting stamps, so that when they sit down with the letters as adults, they enjoy a journey even before opening them.

I must say, though, that I’ve grown tired of the Thai Post Office “air mail” stamp.  I’ve recently thought about having a rubber stamp or two custom made with my own air mail logo.  Browsing the internet, I collected bits of clip art and sat down last week to create some potential designs.  Lacking Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator, I instead used PowerPoint and SnagIt to create and manipulate these images.  Your thoughts and opinions are most welcome. 

1Stamp Design 1 

#1 – My initial design was very simple, perfect for a rubber stamp.  It features a plane that looks to be a Ford Tri-Motor and some simple text, with French, naturellement!

2Stamp Design 2

#2 – Advancing the design a bit, I decided to get more martial in my font choice.  This would certainly capture the attention of the employees at the postal service. 

3Stamp Design 6   4Stamp Design 9

I continued my experimenting with a new airplane image, one with a transparent background that let me lay the image over text and other graphics.  Design #3 was my first attempt with the circular logo, playing around with PowerPoint’s word art feature until I figured out how to use it.  Design #4 introduced stars and saw the plane heading in the other direction, which gives it an altogether different feel.

5Stamp Design 8   6Stamp Design 13

The next two designs made use of rotating everything 270 degrees, which is a little silly considering that with a rubber stamp, I could just hold the stamp at an angle.  No need to design everything at an angle, too!  Anyhow, design #5 simplified the circular border and had the airplane’s wing and propeller breaking the border, which is a dynamic effect.  In design #6 I returned the second circle and also introduced the Thai phrase for “air mail”.

7Stamp Design 18

Feeling that I had neglected modern aviation, design #7 introduced the silhouette of a Boeing 737 Next Generation and a simple text box.  I played around with it to have the airplane’s tail and landing gear break the border of the text box, giving it a little bit of dimension.

8Stamp Design 12   9Stamp Design 11   10Stamp Design 10

I started to wonder whether, instead of making a rubber stamp, I should just have the air mail logo printed as an adhesive stamp, an inexpensive prospect.  So I created a series of designs to explore that idea.  #8 has a nice “out of the box” effect.  #9 is similar but introducing color and moving the Thai to align with the English and French.  #10 played with the idea of inverting the colors, which is interesting.

11Stamp Design 15      12Stamp Design 14

Next, I decided to revisit the classic air mail envelope, but couldn’t decide how to end the stripes.  #11 complements the angle of the italic letters while #12 has the 90-degree angle of a classic letter envelope.

13Stamp Design 17    14Stamp Design 16

My final two designs were a little more art deco.  #13 is an original and took some time to figure out how to make the airplane image come together correctly.  #14 is an homage to a classic stamp I saw online, with a few small changes.

So what do you think?  Which one(s) do you like and do you think I should go rubber stamp or self-adhesive?