Found on Booooooom, we enjoyed these little figures composed of stamps and cancelations by Sapporo-based artist Baku Maeda. The cut-up typography includes the stylised katakana symbol〒(yลซbin kigล, read more here) the service mark of Japan, derived from the word for communications teishin and used to as punctuation to indicate a zip code as well. Explore more of the artist’s portfolio, his collaborations with fellow creative Toru Yoshikawa and peruse a large gallery of his drawings and photography at the links above.
Tuesday 18 December 2018
Thursday 18 October 2018
thurn und taxis
Breaking with a one hundred and forty-four year old convention that regulates postal rates world-wide in order to prevent barriers to entry by poorer nations and promote the ease of cross border communication and commerce, Trump is signalling that the US will withdraw from the treaty that legitimised and continued the Universal Postal Union, an arrangement that has fully one hundred and ninety three signatories with the four outlying states relying on other members to execute their mail delivery.
Drafted at a time when European powers were dominant exporters and much of Asia was agrarian society (also kind of a myth borne out of the idea of exceptionalism), the US believes the conditions of the treaty disadvantages American business by subsidising shipments from China and flooding markets with cheaper wares. Prior to the agreement, countries needed to negotiate separate treaties and issue stamps for each leg of the missive’s journey, often outsourcing mail delivery to forwarding agents under conditions and protocols created during the sixteenth century by the Lombard-German royal house referenced in the title. The US was already given the dispensation to dictate rates for large packages but small parcels (under two kilogrammes—in keeping with the union’s original charter to establish a uniform and affordable flat-rate across currencies and purchasing-parity for sending letters and vendors’ samples) were under the jurisdiction of the international body. The proliferation of on-line shopping translated to opportunities for retail sellers. What do you think? Maybe the house of Thurn & Taxis were the original postal Illuminati but this recent investigation on the treaty and the Universal Postal Union from Planet Money is helpful and comprehensive primer for understanding what is at stake.
Friday 19 January 2018
franking privilege
A leading pro-BREXIT campaigner chided Royal Mail for issuing a set of commemorative stamps celebrating the career of Pink Floyd, as Kottke informs, whilst refusing to do the same to mark the occasion of the UK’s departure from the European Union. The internet quickly obliged to fulfil that glaring philatelic niche.
Saturday 24 September 2016
a murder is announced
In commemoration of the centenary of her work and the fortieth anniversary of the great crime novelist’s death, the British postal service will be issuing a set of stamps from Studio Sutherl& and artist Neil Webb that contain embedded clues (hidden lenticular and microprinting and heat-sensitive ink) to solve Agatha Christie’s mysteries. The artwork is unique but reminds me a little of macabre styling of Edward Gorey, especially his opening animated sequence to the PBS Mystery-hour.
Sunday 1 May 2016
liiketoimintaryhmรคt
Going postal has a quite different meaning for the letter-carriers in Finland, where for the traditionally low-volume summer months—and fearing their jobs might be in danger of redundancy with fewer people bothering with mail-service—Posti, for a modest fee, will offer to mow the lawns of customers on their beat.
Utilizing existing knowledge and a neighbourly familiarity hard to reproduce, the Finnish government has more pilot projects for the postal-service in community outreach, including detailing mail men and women to check on the elderly and to conduct security patrols. I think that this is fantastic, and an example for other struggling postal networks—which generally only partner with their commercial-competitors, and starkly opposed to the endangered rural outposts in America that can no longer even provide basic financial services where there’s a need and a banking vacuum because of the influence of predatory lending agencies.
catagories: ๐ซ๐ฎ, ๐ฏ, labour, transportation
Saturday 17 January 2015
a specimen of the cashiers’ receipt
catagories: ๐ฏ, ๐ฅธ, environment
Thursday 7 June 2012
overseas telegram
Here’s a bit of typically nannying that strikes me like those Friday afternoon conscientious bureaucrat emergencies that necessarily wait until just before quitting-time and the weekend because to be unburdened and shared freely because it took the problem-holder all week to perfect it: