2022 USPS Stamp Issues.thoughts? Opinions?

What are your thoughts and opinions on the 2022 USPS stamp issues?

This is a duplicate post?


Peter

Petert4522: No, this is not a duplicate post. There was an informative topic in this forum initiated by another author regarding the 2021 USPS stamp issues that received numerous replies throughout 2021.

http://goscf.com/t/74538&SearchTerms=2021,issues

A new year with new issues in my opinion deserves a new topic.

This earlier post seemed to be inviting opinions:

http://goscf.com/t/78977

I posted this topic here on 12/11/21 and for some reason it was moved (http://goscf.com/t/79387). We have had an annual USPS topic for years and I don't understand why the Mods moved mine and not this one. Either way, how about the upcoming 2022 stamps?

The 2022 are not as good as the 2021 issues. Too many flowers, what look like digital images and minor historical figures. Why not Michael Jackson instead of Pete Seeger?

2022 is certainly the year of the woman for USPS, not that there's anything wrong with that. Set those issues aside, as well as anything repetitive (love, celebrate, flags, flowers, etc.) and there's not much left to collect this year.

You're all sounding like everything for 2022 has already been announced.

Me, I'm waiting for the next lenticular motion/flicker picture issue so we can catch up to Bhutan.

Every time I look at U.S. new issues, I'm incredibly happy I stopped caring in 1993.

I don't like them. The title ix have the best design, the flags are ok. The rest are horrible. They need to stop with photographs of people. You know nothing about who they are, what they did. No thought put into those.

Forgot to add the Shel Silverstein stamp looks pretty and I think it will be a popular seller.

https://about.usps.com/newsroom/nat...in-stamp.htm

So far my favorites are:

Flags
Title IX
The Morrison and Mighty Mississippi look promising.
The $5 and $2 will have foil as part of their design so it might look better than the pics which make it seem terribly plain and uninteresting.

The one stamp that surprised me that it worked out decently was the Edmonia Lewis. Not too bad although I would say it isn't great.

The Title IX stamps are elegant and offer a great mix of Classical and Modern design. The Laurel leaf motif is handled well and the side profiles is quite 18th century. THe modern dress and the type of women drawn is modern. However what is rather brilliant is the design of the pane. I got one a few days ago and studied it. Below are my observations:

a) Extensive use of mirror imaging vertically and horizontally allows for no one design to be repeated consecutively, rather two designs in each rows only alternate. If the USPS had simply repeated the same order of columns 1 and 2 in 3 and 4 this would have not happened. Note how column 3 serves as a vertical axis of this mirroring.

b) Most clever is the number iterations of the 4 complete designs given in a block or column. It equals 9, underscoring the name of the legislation Title IX in the very mosaic pattern of the pane. You would need to purchase two panes to get all 9 -the 4 blocks of 4 designs in the corners and the 4 designs given in each of the 5 columns. But to keep collectors on their toes, only 4 of these iterations produce the 4 designs with plate numbers (and again you would need to buy 2 panes) the two bottom corners for 2 blocks of 4 and columns 1 and 5 for the two other sets of all 4 designs. Very clever artistically and commercially!

I think those with an observant eye of the Title IX pane of 20 will gain added enjoyment from the thoughtful effort put into the layout of the stamps to create such a rich mosaic. ANd to me this is when stamp collecting is most fun.

Chris s: You are quite the artistic sleuth. Excellent perception!

Thanks Torin. I am a professional music composer although I earn very little income from it -- mostly contemporary classical solo and chamber works, a niche that guarantees poverty or exhaustion if you choose to rely only on that. Writing music as with the visual arts relies on mastering patterns, contrast, full and empty space. Also enjoy photography for fun. So I guess I have transferred these skills to looking at stamp design!

I am tempted to get another pane from the post office just so whoever buys or inherits these in the future will get the mospt bang for their buck.

Just as an aside, the design elements of the Title IX pane are not unique, just not always used. The Hip Hop stamps employ the same design arrangements for those panes but number of possible collections of 4 designs without repetition has not connection to what is being commemorated.

One correction regarding what I wrote about the 2020 Hip Hop stamps, although it employs some facets of mosaic design as the Title IX such as the mirror imaging at the horizontal axis and avoidance of repeating one design consecutively, there is a clever element to the pane design. Unlike the Title IX there is no vertical mirroring. The 4 designs in blocks of 4 are given consecutively, northwest corner and then north corner and then south and southeast corner of the pane. Note though in column 5 the top two stamps and 1 bottom teo, the 4 pane design is interrupted - that is "broken up" and cannot be presented as a block of 4. This is a nod to the common practice of breaking apart beats to create new ones for the background music which rappers rap to. It is also an allusion to breakdancing.

Again, if you look carefully, you see the USPS Art Directors really make a conscientious effort to have the pane designs be engaging and connect to the commemorative theme in some way --- it is up to the philatelist to discover this and savor the connotations and added dimensions design brings to the stamps.