For our second assignment in ART244: Digital Processes, we completed a project named Philately. The project is based on the study of stamp collections. Professor Ruby assigned us to create a series of stamps about anything we wanted. As I began looking at stamps online, I saw that there was no specific theme that called my attention; this made me feel like this project was going to be a hard one. 

   Many ideas came to mind, some simple to just get the job done, but that didn’t satisfy me. As I began to see the stamps that my classmates were making, I began to believe that going the personal route would be my best bet. With that in mind, my theme became immigration, a theme I’m not foreign to and have completed a whole video about, yet something scary that I try to pull away from.

   Immigration affects many individuals all over the world. I immigrated at a young age with my mother and sister, running away for a better life. With time, my sister and I became residents, while my mom remained without a status. Recently my family has been separated, causing such a significant hole in my heart. As I continue to live here, I hear such terrible things about us immigrants, such negative stereotypes that are far from the truth, yet we cannot speak out about since we will not be heard. Such pain we are caused, and that pain I have I used to make art to speak the words of those that are hushed.

   Like I mentioned before, as I searched online, I did not see many pieces that sparked my imagination. The styles and depictions were either too idealized or just too repetitive. I tend to lean towards realistic styles, but I knew it wasn’t going to be a good fit for this project. As I began sketching, I saw that I always began to draw the face and the outward, so I decided to try something new and try to draw from the outside inward, which concluded my sketching process. 

Faces are personal, for no two people have the same face (unless you have a twin, but we will ignore that). I felt like I had to challenge myself to make a stamp series that is personal but without the faces. While I love to draw faces, I felt like this stamp project was already personal, so why make it so personal that I am the only one that identifies with the stamp series? I didn’t want that, so the faceless characters came to be. The subjects being faceless were also a huge bonus since people looking at the stamps could put a person they know and make it personal for themselves. 

After the sketches were done, I placed a scan on AI and began sketching away; each individual line and shape began to be filled with color and a story. Each stamp took about two days, with an extra day for polishing, so the whole month was not needed. I only used the pen tool, the template layer, and the color tool to pick each individual color for the stamps. I found it interesting that I didn’t plan the colors ahead, yet they came out nicely, and all the stamps matched. When all my stamps were done, I had to come up with a phrase to place on them, and so the brainstorming began.

   “What We Build” or “Lo Que Construimos” came to mind since my father is a construction worker. Because of his job, my dad is physically building homes and such, but he is also building my sisters and my future. Like my father, my mother also builds my life by bringing us to America and providing for us in whatever way she could. I couldn’t pick between the English version or the Spanish version, so I decided to do both; This also was a good idea since it fits the theme. The words were perfect. 

   Once my stamps were done, I turned them in and waited for the feedback. When I was given the feedback, I was told that the fonts that I use for the writing were kind of a problem since the lines on certain letters were too thin and dissolved into the background. To get aspirations on what fonts to use, I decided to go back to my video once again and look at the font that I use there. The font was too simple, so that was a no-go. Since most of the choices for the project or randomly done, I decided to just get a version of the stamps without the writing and try different fonts on Canva. 

   When I placed the stamps into Canva, I tried different fonts, placed different fonts on each stamp, and looked to see which one was best. When I picked the final font, I decided to save the images and actually print them out. Professor Ruby mentioned during class that a way to see if things look to write in a composition is by getting a physical copy, which is why I decided to make my own sticker stamps. Though I didn’t like the paper that I used, I do see that the font looks so much better, and the lines on certain letters do not dissolve into the background, which made me very pleased with my final product, but I will still play around with the fonts and sizing.