STAMP IT// Stamp Book

Using the new layouts I managed to print and cut the stamps and book cover earlier today. I'm pretty happy with the overall result and they have received some positive feedback so far. My only concern would be that the stamps are too dark and depressing. This is a problem I tried to overcome earlier in the brief but the more I researched the more I came to terms with he fact that these maps are the truth about state of the planet and the brief was not aimed at a cotton wool audience but at stamp collections who might appreciate the design and message.

The lino cutter follows a line path from illustrator, the line itself was not printed and a bleed was added to colour which reaches the edge in case the cutter did not cut a perfect line. 

After initial concerns about the precision of the cutter at such small scale the stamps came out perfect. The notches are all nicely cut and the back of the sticky paper could be removed easily to leave the stamps.

The print quality was good but I do worry that the pollution map is fairly small scale to be readable. Stamps do have a surprisingly small scale when you considers some of the other special designs so hopefully this will be acceptable. The only other issue I have is that the colours clash a bit. I knew this would happen because you can tell from the digital designs, I don't really have a problem with it but it would be something to consider if I want to take this work further.

I printed the booklet on satin paper which is a nice cross between gloss and matt. The solid colour with white looks a bit 2000's to me but the aim was to keep this simple so it actually looks like a stamp book.

Inside I arranged the stamps to four a page. I used double sided tape to get the paper sticker paper attached to the booklet. This worked very well looks pretty seamless when held.

This is the back cover of the book which reiterates the message of the booklet.