Sometimes stamps have ‘Easter eggs’

Small, meaningful images within images — known as “Easter eggs” — are common in video games and digital media.

But they can be found in stamps, too.

Last year’s 250 Years of Delivering stamps are a prime example.

The pane is one overall design divided into 20 stamps, and while each stamp can stand alone, together they tell a broader story. This type of design is called se-tenant.

The effort was a collaboration between Antonio Alcalá, an art director for USPS, and artist Chris Ware, a graphic novelist.

“I tried to give each stamp its own ‘gag’ — cartoonist parlance — which really only becomes apparent when the image is isolated,” Ware said in an article on the USPS Stamps Forever website.

One stamp includes a Pony Express statue in a nod to postal history; another shows a stamp collector, acknowledging the USPS role in philately; another shows a woman writing a letter; and both next-generation delivery vehicles and long-life vehicles are displayed, representing the current evolution of the USPS fleet.

Last year’s Betty White stamp also contains a memorable Easter egg: White sports a pawprint earring in the stamp portrait, an elegantly economical way to communicate the comedian’s ardent animal welfare advocacy.

“It’s hard to tell a story in a 1-inch-by-1-inch space,” said Claudia Daniels, stamp development manager. Easter eggs “expand the story beyond the stamp’s physical limitations.”

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