LETTERS IN NOVEMBER: STAMPS

It's funny how I seem to be busier when I'm on my off days than when I'm not. I must admit, I do like these busy days, only because I'm doing the things I love. When my internship ended on the 27th of November, the first thing I did was download the new Adobe Creative Cloud on my Surface Pro. It helped that Black Friday was going on in America then, which meant Adobe was having 20% subscription prices. So in the end, for just $13 a month, I get to have all the apps in the Adobe world, including Photoshop, Illustrator, Light Room, In Design, you name it. It seems a waste that I wouldn't be using 75% of the apps, but I'm not complaining. It's advantageous to still be a student.

Anyway, I've always been fascinated with people who create stamps, digital or physical. To be honest, I've been fascinated with everything graphic design. I've always wondered how it happens - what it takes to create your own designs; does someone use stock images, or are they created from scratch? I assumed the general consensus was that people created their own graphics to prevent copyright, but how? Was it difficult? Where would you start?

I did my own research, and the best app amongst the Adobe world to create stamps seems to be Illustrator, so that was what I started learning first. For two days, I worked at it, learnt the basics, seeked out online video tutorials, and on the third day, I managed to generate my own 4 x 6" stamp set, which I admit, is pretty damn cool.

Which brings me to the point of this post: my current future hope of Letters in November will be the selling of stamps - both in digital and physical form. I know it will take a lot of work, but now that I have a month break before the start of my 'real world' job of being a Radiographer (hopefully), I have time to research what I need and how to do it. Being in Australia, finding an acrylic / photopolymer stamp maker seems to be a little troublesome for me (any Aussie readers out there, if you know any, do let me know!) as there doesn't seem to be many. So my stamps may be available only digitally for the time being. Either way, in order to get the ball rolling, I've decided to show you lovely readers a peek into what the upcoming stamp set will look like:

This is before my stamp set was edited further, as I have decided to make the whole set 6 x 4" instead, but this is the general gist. I'm hoping I'll be seeing some thumbs up from it, and to celebrate this new age, I've decided to include a little free print out below:

All you have to do is right click on the image, open in up in a new window, save it, and boom, you'll be able to print it out and use as you wish (but please, only for personal use!). I'm still learning how to upload and distribute my files properly (pretty sure there was a better way to do it than how I did it!), so please bear with me. I'll welcome any suggestions in the comments below!

Exciting times ahead!