Shaping the Future Together

On 30 September 2024, PostNL will publish the stamp sheet Shaping the future together. The reason for this release is the congress of the Association of Space Explorers (ASE) in Noordwijk which starts on 30 September. More than 100 astronauts will come to the Netherlands for this congress hosted by the astronaut André Kuipers. The Shaping the future together stamps each have a value of 1 for mail weighing up to 20 grams with a destination within the Netherlands. The price for a sheet of 6 stamps is €6.84. The new stamps were created by the graphic designer Lilian Vos from the Vividblue design agency in Amsterdam.

From 30 September to 6 October 2024, a special space congress will take place in Noordwijk and Amsterdam: The 35th Planetary Congress of the Association of Space Explorers (ASE). The ASE wants to inspire as many people as possible, share knowledge, promote international cooperation and look to the future together with younger generations. The members of the ASE are astronauts who have completed at least one orbit of the Earth. The host of the 35th congress is the Dutch astronaut André Kuipers. The theme of the congress is Generation Space – shaping the future together. The stamp sheet Shaping the future together reflects the overview perspective, i.e. what astronauts see when they look at the Earth from space. This perspective also leads to insight into how fragile our world is and how important it is that humanity cherishes, protects and preserves the Earth for future generations.

The Shaping the future release has 6 stamps in 2 different designs. The large stamp at the bottom of the stamp sheet is a semicircle shape. This large stamp features a colour illustration of the Earth by day, as seen from space. A large curved shape overhead contains 5 identical smaller stamps which are trapezoid in shape and together form the atmosphere. The 5 stamps each feature a colour illustration that represents the astronaut’s view of the Earth from space at night. We see the colours of a rising sun, green auroras, the starry sky and the moon. On the dark earth, the light of the rising sun reflects off clouds and water.

The stars in the upper part of the 5 smaller stamps extend into the outer space depicted on the rest of the sheet edge above. On the top left of the sheet edge is a picture of the International Space Station high above the Earth. On the top right of the sheet edge, the moon on the smaller stamps is replicated in larger form. In the observation module of the ISS, the face of the Dutch astronaut André Kuipers is subtly visible behind one of the windows, photographed during Expedition 30. During this expedition in 2011-2012, the crew also saw Comet Lovejoy, an illustration of which is depicted on the right below the title of the stamp sheet. The background of the stamp sheet is deep black.

The text uses the Tektur font by the type designer Adam Jagosz from Bielsko-Biała (Poland) and Arboria by the type designer José Manuel Urós from Barcelona (Spain). The value indication of 1 is in the Black OPS One font by the type designers James Grieshaber from Rochester (New York) and Eben Sorkin from Boston (Massachusetts).

With the new stamps Shaping the future together, PostNL is putting the 35th Planetary Congress of the Association of Space Explorers (ASE) in the spotlight. It will take place in Noordwijk and Amsterdam from 30 September to 6 October 2024. The design of Shaping the future together was created by the graphic designer Lilian Vos, from the Vividblue design agency in Amsterdam. Lilian Vos was also responsible for designing the stamp sheet Journey to the Moon in 2023.

View from space
For her design concept, Lilian Vos chose the perspective from which astronauts look at the Earth. “In Noordwijk, more than 100 astronauts will gather who have all made at least one orbit around the Earth. This experience also means that they share an awareness of the fragility of our planet. Seen from space, the atmosphere is just a thin shell, something you could almost just blow away. The astronaut André Kuipers once said that up there he got the feeling that he wanted to protect the Earth like a baby.”

Overview effect
Vos wanted her design to show the simultaneous beauty and fragility of the Earth. “And also how important it is that we are aware of that, because we don’t have a ‘planet B’. In preparation for the design, I saw the NASA film Down to Earth - The Astronaut’s Perspective from 2023. What struck me was how the astronauts interviewed spoke with emotion about their first look at the indescribable beauty of the Earth, with colours that are more vivid than any colour you’ve seen before, in an immensely black space. That’s what they call the overview effect: the experience of an astronaut who, after having viewed our Earth from space, notices that their worldview has fundamentally changed. That in turn fits with ASE’s goal of preserving the Earth for future generations. That’s where the title Shaping the future together for the stamps comes from.”

Optimistic and inspiring
Vos’ first hand sketches for the new space stamps already included the contours of the atmosphere and the Earth, including where they actually ended up on the stamp sheet. “It was a challenge to fit the entire universe on a stamp. I wanted to portray the subject in an optimistic and inspiring way. This release is not the promised sequel to Journey to the Moon from 2023 as that will not come until man has set foot on the moon again, which NASA expects in 2026. There are similarities, though. The human perspective plays an important role in both releases. And again, the stamps have striking shapes.”

An imagined reality
The images of the atmosphere and the Earth are based on photos taken from space. “They are illustrations, an imagined reality,” says Vos. “That’s how you see the green aurora above the colours of the atmosphere. In reality, of course, this light phenomenon is not seen everywhere. But I let it run all the way alongside the atmosphere because the top 5 stamps had to be exactly the same. I also illustrated the earth on the big stamp myself. Real photos of the Earth from space are always extremely detailed but I wanted to imagine how astronauts experience the Earth from space. Everything is viewed from that perspective, including the moon and the Earth, with the hard black transition at the bottom that astronauts call ‘the terminator.’”Upside down

The first sketches still lacked the ISS. Vos added it later because it fits exactly with the core of her design which is the perspective of astronauts from space. Vos: “I came across the ISS photo while browsing through the NASA image archive. This photo was taken during Expedition 30 in which André Kuipers also participated. In fact, he is in the photo if you look closely, behind the window in the observation module, on the left by the open hatch. The photo is so striking because you see how the ISS skims over us, upside down. It illustrates the difference between our perspective with both feet on Earth and the perspective of astronauts when they fly upside down over the Earth. They travel at great speed: on board the ISS you see the sun rise and set 16 times in a 24-hour period. This also represents that movement.

The same feeling
An important step in the design process was presenting the interim result to André Kuipers. After all, he has been in space and knows the perspective. Vos: “That was exciting. Would he recognise it? Would it be correct? He was quiet for a moment and then said ‘wow, you’ve captured it so well, I get the same feeling as up there’. We then went through all the details and I made some more changes based on what he told me. The green aurora started to move like curtains, as they say. Above the aurora, outside the 5 atmospheric stamps, I added some reddish-brown light radiation, a reflection that is only visible from space. André told me about seeing Comet Lovejoy from the ISS and the beautiful reflections of a low sun on the water. He also said that he remembered how the photo on the top left was taken from another space module.”

Feet on the ground
On the stamp sheet, the Earth appears twice: on the large stamp at the bottom and on the sheet edge below the atmospheric stamps. In the lower part of these small stamps, you can see the subtle reflection of the light from the rising sun. “On the surface of the water, for example, there’s what astronauts call ‘sunglint,’” says Vos. “And you can also see it on what I had thought of as mountain tops. When I said that to André, he started laughing. ‘You can see the reflection of the light on the clouds,’ he said. I loved it. Then you notice how used we are to thinking from a perspective with both feet on the ground, while in the ISS they are looking at the Earth from space.”

Shapes and perforations
The Shaping the future together stamps were given a special shape: the large stamp is a semicircle while the 5 smaller stamps have a trapezoidal shape. Vos: “I only wanted to depict the earth once on a stamp, because we only have 1 earth, right? The 5 identical stamps were cut out of the atmosphere by continuing the same perspective from the circle. The trapezoidal shape also returns in the windows of the ISS, but that image rhyme is mainly a coincidence. A perforation has been added to the stamps, but not all the way around. The location of the perforation on the atmospheric stamps indicates the direction of the view from the ISS. On the earth stamp, the perforation emphasises the ‘terminator’, the hard transition between light and dark.”

Fonts
The back of the stamp sheet displays a text that André Kuipers wrote at the request of Lilian Vos about his experience as an astronaut with the overview effect. The text is printed in blue and red, PMS colours taken from the atmosphere on the front cover. The fonts for Shaping the future together are related to space travel. For example, the Tektur font with its angular letters was chosen because of its association with engineering and construction. The value indication of 1 is in Black OPS One font, a stencil-like letter that refers to how text on spacecraft is sometimes milled out of metal. For the typography of the reading text, Vos chose Arboria, the same font used on the 2023 Journey to the Moon stamps.

Phosphor underlayer
There is also a special story to be told about the printing process. Vos: “In addition to magenta and yellow, 4 PMS colours were used to best represent the bright colours you experience from space: blue, red, green and black. All stamps have been given a phosphor layer which is necessary for the sorting process. These stamps have a phosphor underlayer, meaning that it is applied first during the printing process. Moreover, the phosphor layer has really become part of the design. On the earth stamp, the phosphor layer covers the entire stamp. On the atmospheric stamp, the phosphor layer partly follows the trapezoid shape and the moon is spared from the phosphor as it is outside the atmosphere.”

About the designer
Lilian Vos (Sittard, 1964) studied graphic design at the Academie Beelden Kunsten in Maastricht from 1982 to 1987. After graduating, she worked as a graphic designer for Studio 124 Design in Amsterdam and as design director for VBAT in Amsterdam. In January 2021, together with Paulien van de Oudeweetering, she started the Vividblue | Brand design agency in Amsterdam. Vividblue focuses on corporate identities and brand strategy, and produces logos, style elements, illustrations, annual reports, digital applications and spatial works. The agency works in a wide-ranging yet detail-oriented way for clients including Caldic (raw materials and additives for the food, pharmaceutical and cosmetics sector), Kaemingk (seasonal decoration supplier), PostNL and Royal Cosun (an agricultural cooperative).