Switzerland -

“ LETTER vs. E-MAIL.”

Unique Silver Foil Stamp ~ First Day Cover !

The versatility of this stamp knows no bounds.

Anyone who looks at it sees themselves !!

But that’s not the only unique feature of this extraordinary project.

The selfie stamp owes its existence to a co-operative venture between Swiss Post and students completing a consolidation course in visual communication at the Zurich University of the Arts. The diligent bachelor’s degree students (average age 22) were briefed by project leaders on the course topic of “Letter vs. e-mail”.

The de sign process pursued by the eight teams of two and seven solo aspirants was supervised by the university’s lecturers. The winning design out of the ten best submissions picked and then entered in a final round was created by Nicole Jara Vizcardo.

The young designer’s concept showed how the rise of e-mail has meant that letters have become digitalized. She drew her inspiration from this and thought about how she could transfer something typical from the digital world to the format of a postage stamp.

A selfie - a self-portrait taken at a specific moment and transmitted electronically - appeared the most convincing form to her. Mirroring the zeitgeist, it is literally a true reflection of our society. 

Silver 1mm was used to produce this unusual stamp. The sheet of special stamps shows 20 individual stamps which form a tablet that reflects the face of the observer - the perfect symbol of the symbiosis between digital and analogue reality.

Date of Issue: 31^st August 2017.