Purpose designs Royal Mail stamps celebrating Remarkable Lives

Purpose has designed a set of stamps for the Royal Mail celebrating Britons with ‘Remarkable Lives’, with graphic designer Abram Games among those commemorated.

Abram Games

The set of ten stamps, released tomorrow, celebrates would-be centurions who were born in 1914 and are deemed to have made ‘a major contribution’ to British society.

Noorunissa Inayat Khan

Other Britons include Noorunissa Inayat Khan, a Special Operations Executive (SOE) agent in occupied France, the poet and writer Dylan Thomas, and the stage and screen actor Sir Alec Guinness.

Dylan Thomas

The design solution was to source original portrait photographs that would tell a narrative about the subject through the backdrop, their pose or clothing.

Alec Guinness
Alec Guinness

Each image has been retouched so that as a set they all take on the aesthetic of silver bromide photography.

Barbara Ward
Barbara Ward

Purpose has also designed the presentation packs, the first day cover and filler card, and two ‘cancellation’ stamps.

Joan Littlewood

The pack and first day cover insert are designed to resemble an Edwardian display cabinet and showcase a collection of objects that relate to the subjects of the stamp.

Joe Mercer

Books, posters, awards and other memorabilia have been referenced in the design, which features a green felt background, archive pins for numbering and navigating the objects.

Kenneth More

One ‘cancellation stamp’ features the quote ‘Liberté’, thought to be the last word of the British spy Noorunissa Inayat Khan, who operated in France during WWII. She was captured and tortured by the Gestapo and eventually shot by firing squad, still refusing to betray her comrades.

Max Perutz stamp

The second stamp quotes, ‘Do not go gentle into that good night’, from a poem of the same name by Dylan Thomas that urges us to make every moment count.

Roy Plomley

Last year Together Design worked on a similar set which celebrated Great Britons.

Full pack
Folder
First Day Cover
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