Award-winning artist and designer Jeanne Greco has found a new “gallery” for her work: first-class mail. She has designed the latest stamps in the United States Postal Service’s perennial favorite Love Series. The two new 44-cent stamps feature the King and Queen of Hearts and will be available Friday, May 8th nationwide.
“After Robert Indiana’s iconic pop design in 1973, Love stamps have featured the usual vocabulary of hearts, flowers and cherubs. I wanted to create something different,” said Greco. When the project was commissioned, she asked the USPS art director, Derry Noyes, if she had to do a single stamp or if she could do a two-stamp design. “After all, love takes two,” she reasoned.
She got her wish. “With each having their own stamp, the King and Queen have equal importance,”
The stamps are sold on a 20-stamp patterned sheet with alternating Kings and Queens, where the two characters were designed “to meet, repeat and transcend the perforations.”
“In a way, it’s sad that the King and Queen will usually be used separately, but I hope they’ll find each other in the same mailbox from time to time. Perhaps they’re destined to reconnect only by chance in a royal flush or on an envelope that weighs more than an ounce.”
Jeanne Greco considers herself a visual problem-solver. As the principal of Caffe Greco Design, she tells her clients’ stories through calligraphy, drawing and photograms. A specialist in lettering, logo and package design, she is perhaps best known for creating wine and food labels for Francis Ford Coppola and designing the lettering for Barbie.
In recent years, Jeanne has enjoyed more intimacy in her work—she has found her designs shrinking in size: “I like to work within the borders of a limited space. I am drawn to the details of a letterform and enjoy the challenge of a logo project. I am inspired by small, beautiful objects. No wonder it led me to a postage stamp.”
Jeanne Greco is a lifelong New Yorker. She attended public schools in Brooklyn, graduating from John Dewey High School while attending art school at The Brooklyn Museum. She went on to graduate from The Cooper Union. She lives in SoHo with her husband and two sons.
The King and Queen of Hearts stamps are available at all U.S. post offices and at www.USPS.com. To see more of Jeanne’s work, visit http://www.caffegrecodesign.com and http://www.jeannegreco.com .
