On 12 August 2024, PostNL will publish Experience Nature – The Flora of Bonaire, a sheet of 10 stamps in 10 different designs. The stamps each bear a value of 1 for mail weighing up to 20 grams with a destination within the Netherlands. The price for a sheet of 10 stamps is €11.40. The stamp sheet about the flora of Bonaire is part of the multi-year Experience Nature series dedicated to the Caribbean Netherlands in 2024-2026. In the series, 4 stamp sheets will be published every year, each featuring 10 different stamps. The stamps depict plants and animals that occur in this part of the Netherlands. With thousands of species of plants and animals, the islands in this area have a level of biodiversity otherwise unknown within the Netherlands.
In 2024, attention will be paid to the birds, butterflies, marine life and flora of the island of Bonaire. With the fourth and final release of 2024, Experience Nature – The Flora of Bonaire, the starring roles are reserved for the goat’s foot, dividivi, melon cactus, holywood, red mangrove, lady of the night, dagger cactus, sea purslane, Dutch casha and prosopis juliflora.
Just like Sint Eustatius and Saba, the island of Bonaire is a special municipality of the Netherlands. These three islands are collectively known as the Caribbean Netherlands. Together with the countries of Aruba, Curaçao and Sint Maarten, they form the broader Dutch Caribbean. Bonaire covers an area of almost 29,000 hectares, which translates to one and a half times the size of the Dutch island of Texel in Europe. Around 24,000 people live on Bonaire, most of whom speak Papiamentu as their first language. Their main sources of income are tourism and salt production. The island is a popular destination for diving holidays and cruises. Bonaire has been a special municipality since 2010, meaning that the island council is responsible for local legislation as the highest governing body. Executive power lies with the island deputies appointed by the island council, chaired by the governor. The island has a relatively abundant amount of nature. To the north lies Washington Slagbaai National Park, with cactus forests, aloe fields, rocky outcrops, salt lakes, limestone caves, sand dunes, blowholes and crumbling limestone terraces. The park covers over 4,200 hectares and became the first nature reserve in the Netherlands Antilles in 1969. Meanwhile, Bonaire National Marine Park has been a legally protected underwater park since 1979. It surrounds the entire island, as well as the uninhabited island of Klein Bonaire. The reserve covers over 6,600 hectares and includes coral reef, seagrass and mangrove forest. Klein Bonaire is itself also a legally protected nature reserve. Surrounded by coral reef, the island is home to salt lakes where red flamingos come to forage, as well as important sea turtle nesting sites.
The character of the flora on Bonaire is mainly determined by the prevailing tropical steppe climate, which in turn is closely related to its geographical location. Bonaire is located in an area of severe drought, constant winds and high even temperatures. The rainy season lasts from October to January, and the rapid evaporation of precipitation is amplified by the constant easterly trade winds. The geology of the island also determines which plants and trees grow there, with volcanic rocks inland and young coral limestone and sandy and clay soil on the coast. The flora on the island consists mainly of plants, shrubs and trees that have adapted to the high temperatures and evaporation rates and can withstand long periods of drought. Plants have water reservoirs in their stems and leaves. Trees tend to stay low with flat crowns. Shrubs often have thorny trunks and branches with leathery leaves that are indented to catch less wind.
Source: De plantenwereld van onze Benedenwindse Eilanden (“The Plant World of Our Leeward Antilles”) The stamp sheet Experience Nature – The Flora of Bonaire is created by the graphic designer Frank Janse from Gouda. On the sheet, 10 plants, flowers, shrubs and trees are each portrayed on a separate stamp in their natural environment. The following species are featured: goat’s foot, dividivi, melon cactus, holywood, red mangrove, lady of the night, dagger cactus, sea purslane, Dutch casha and prosopis juliflora. All photos appear in a graphic layer with circular shapes that are also visible on the sheet edge. The images also sometimes continue onto the adjacent stamp and the edge of the sheet. At various places on the stamp sheet, the designer has added graphic elements that are borrowed from the symbols on old topographical maps. These symbols are used to indicate aspects like the shape of the landscape, contour lines, vegetation, terrain and watercourses.The design is also characterized by an additional transparent layer containing monochrome images (both white and in colour) of some of the main plants featured on the stamps. The monochrome images are rendered in almost abstract form, running over the perforations and connecting the stamps to each other and the edge of the sheet. The following images are included in this way: a goat’s foot flower (upper left), sea purslane leaves (upper right), holywood flowers (to the right above the middle), a goat’s foot stem and leaves (running from centre left to centre right across the width of the stamp sheet), holywood leaves (bottom left) and dagger cacti (bottom right).
The typography is based on DIN 2014, a font designed by Vasily Biryukov from Bulgaria and released by Paratype in 2015. In the captions on the stamp sheet, the designer Frank Janse creatively and humorously expresses his associations with the names, characteristics and appearances of the plants chosen to represent the flora of Bonaire.
In the coming years, PostNL’s Experience Nature series will revolve around the flora and fauna of the Caribbean Netherlands. The 4 releases in 2024 will focus on the nature of Bonaire. PostNL has been releasing these stamp sheets since 2017. Now the graphic designer Frank Janse from Gouda has added a fresh twist to the design.
Bright colours
In the adapted design, the striking colours of Caribbean nature take the lead. Janse: “With this release, you can see the colour of the flora on Bonaire, the green of the leaves, lots of pink in the flowers and some yellow species along the bottom, all combined with the blue of the sky and sea. This release is an outlier in the series. The birds and butterflies on Bonaire, for example, are always colourful, but the flora is much less so in the dry season. I took that into account in my choice of photos. I could have solved it by only depicting flowers, but then you don’t do justice to the diversity of the flora on the island. DIN 2014 was chosen as the new font to put even more emphasis on the colours. This creates a nice contrast between the colours of the plants and flowers on the one hand and the sober and sleek typography on the other. “The frivolous splatters on the edge of the sheet have disappeared,” says Janse. “And I’ve added graphic elements to the stamps for the first time. I associate islands like Bonaire with old topographical maps. The graphic elements on the stamps are taken from the symbols used by cartographers to clarify what an area looks like. It made sense for me to use symbols for vegetation on this stamp sheet, the little sprigs at the top left and bottom right, for example. You can also see wavy lines for the sea around Bonaire and long broken stripes for the types of soil in which the plants and trees grow.”
Roughness
The basic design for the Experience Nature series has been retained, including the circular shapes in the background. “The circles have been applied in a different way,” says Janse. “They don’t protrude as far onto the borders of the sheet, and I let them run along the perforations like a scalloped edge. This represents a certain roughness that I also associate with the topographical symbols on old maps and sea charts where the ink has started to fade and run. The rugged flora caused by the unforgiving climate on Bonaire fits in well with this: drought, high temperatures and a constant easterly wind. The flora has adapted to this with properties designed to retain as much water as possible. These include small and sturdy leaves, low trees and cacti whose leaves have developed into spines that lose less moisture through evaporation.”
Transparent layer
The photographs on the front of the sheet reappear on the back, albeit in monochrome colours against an empty background. Janse: “I used that space to repeat the names of the species depicted, as well as indicating the photographers and the image banks. The colours on the back correspond to the colours of the transparent images on the front. That’s another innovation in this year’s design. The transparent images used to be white, but now colours have also been used because they are so strongly intertwined with Caribbean nature. As a result, the transparent images are more interconnected than ever. For example, the pink goat’s foot flower corresponds to the pink holywood flower on the right side of the sheet edge and the pink cacti on the bottom right. The images on the back are freestanding and extend much further over the perforations. Making them freestanding was quite a job, especially the cacti. All the spines had to be detached from the background one by one. The effect of the stamp sheet is also striking because you get new insight into the structure of a plant, shrub or tree when it is depicted without a background.”
Top
The stamp sheet opens with 2 flowering plant species characteristic of the island: the goat’s foot that grows on sand and the dividivi with its signature windblown shape. “Both are great examples of survivors,” says Janse. “The goat’s foot flower resembles that of the bindweed in the Netherlands, but that’s where the comparison ends. Goat’s foot grows on the beach and is therefore resistant to the salty soil. The stems can grow up to 30 metres long. The photo is a macro shot with an extremely low point of view so you can clearly see how it grows. The photo of the dividivi, on the other hand, was taken from a greater distance. That’s the only way you can fit a standing tree in its entirety onto a horizontal postage stamp. Of course, it also helps that the crown grows sideways. In the photo, you can see how the tree resists the wind with its sturdy roots. The row below features a melon cactus on volcanic rock to the left and a sprig of holywood including flower and leaves to the right. Holywood is heavy, hard and full of resin, making it ideal for shipbuilding. In Zeeland there is the expression ‘dwars als pokhout’ - people are described as being as stubborn as holywood, though I’m not totally sure why.”
Middle
The middle row of stamps depicts mangroves on the left and lady of the night on the right. Janse: “Mangroves are very characteristic of the vegetation close to the coast. This tree can therefore withstand brackish and salt water. The mangrove protects the coast and serves as a breeding ground for all kinds of fish and other aquatic animals. I chose this photo because you can see the sky and the sea as well as sandy beaches and mangroves. The transparent image of the goat’s foot runs right across it for good reason, because it grows on the beach. The stamp on the right depicts the lady of the night, an orchid. The name is elegant, and orchids appear to be fragile flowers. But the lady of the night also grows near cliffs, rocks and mangroves, so near salt water. And also on trees, hence the branch in the background.”
Bottom
You will come across dagger cacti all over Bonaire. The examples on the stamp are so tall that they extend a little onto the stamp above them. “They grow very tall and very old,” says Janse. “I’ve also seen pictures of dagger cacti intertwined to serve as a hedge. Here they tower up nicely, with other cacti in the background. Opposite this photo is another macro shot of sea purslane. It is not to be confused with the plant known as ‘zeepostelein’ in the Netherlands which is similar in appearance and sometimes even goes by the same name. The sea purslane on the stamp grows in or near brackish and salt water, which is where it gets its distinctive taste. With the plants in the bottom row of the stamps, I break the pattern of the pink flowers above. A design should never be too predictable. On the left you can see the pompom flower of the Dutch casha, whose leaves closely resemble those of the prosopis juliflora next to it. This last photo is the only one on the stamp sheet with a camera angle from below. I chose it at the end because I wanted to literally bring air into the composition. As a result, you can almost see and feel how these flowers are moved back and forth by the wind.”
About the designer
Frank Janse (Vlissingen, 1967) completed his studies as a graphic designer at the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam in 2001. Janse is a specialist in corporate identities, branding, infographics and communication campaigns. Until 2019, he worked for various advertising and design agencies, including Room for ID’s, and well as himself as Frank Grafisch Ontwerp in Gouda. In 2019, together with Leene Communicatie, he founded the new company Leene Visuele Communicatie to design communication tools with a focus on content and information design. Leene Visuele Communicatie works for clients including the housing corporation Rochdale, PostNL, Randstad Group Netherlands, the Dutch government, Vattenfall and the organisation for health research and care innovation ZonMw. Since the end of 2022, Frank has been the design director and co-owner of VormVijf in The Hague. VormVijf works for governments, companies and organisations with the (mostly organised) citizen as its main and largest target group. The agency connects strategy, design and content with the ambition to innovate, surprise and create impact. For PostNL, Frank Janse has previously designed various luxury storage systems and personalised stamps, including the 2017 themed collection about bird species in the Netherlands.
