About This Stamp
Issued to celebrate a major U.S. Postal Service anniversary, 250 Years of Delivering is an illustrated pane of 20 interconnected stamps representing the ubiquitous presence of USPS throughout the years — and the vital role the postal system has played in connecting Americans since 1775.
The meticulous artwork shows a bird’s-eye view of a bustling town. Each individual stamp is a frame of sequential art, telling the story of a mail carrier’s journey as she walks her daily route. Laid out in four rows of five stamps, the story progresses through a year’s four seasons, from top-left to bottom-right.
In white sans serif capitals, “USPS/FOREVER/USA” appears at the bottom of each stamp. In blue, centered atop the selvage, is the title, “250 YEARS OF DELIVERING,” bracketed on left and right with two parallel horizontal stripes.
The top row’s stamps include: Post Office loading dock; customers at P.O. entrance; equestrian statue; dogs and their walkers; coffee shop entrance.
Row two: USPS driver waves; park bench; people and animals, mostly in pairs; carrier accesses blue curbside collection box; balloons at rooftop party.
Row three: carrier at apartment cluster box; restaurant customers wave; carrier accesses green USPS relay box; Next Generation Delivery Vehicle in profile; bookstore entrance.
Row four: USPS carrier checks her watch; carrier delivers to man at old house; winter tree; crowd of pedestrians in street; carrier holds child at home.
Chris Ware created the stamp artwork and co-designed the pane with art director Antonio Alcalá.
The 250 Years of Delivering stamps are being issued as Forever® stamps. These Forever stamps are always equal in value to the current First-Class Mail® one-ounce price.
Stamp Art Director, Stamp Designer
Antonio Alcalá
Antonio Alcalá served on the Postmaster General’s Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee from 2010 until 2011, when he left to become an art director for the U.S. Postal Service's stamp development program.
He is founder and co-owner of Studio A, a design practice working with museums and arts institutions. His clients include: the National Gallery of Art, Library of Congress, National Portrait Gallery, National Museum of Women in the Arts, The Phillips Collection, and Smithsonian Institution. He also lectures at colleges including the Corcoran College of Art + Design, SVA, Pratt, and MICA.
In 2008, his work and contributions to the field of graphic design were recognized with his selection as an AIGA Fellow. He has judged international competitions for the Society of Illustrators, American Illustration, AIGA, and Graphis. Alcalá also serves on the Smithsonian National Postal Museum and Poster House Museum’s advisory councils. His designs are represented in the AIGA Design Archives, the National Postal Museum, and the Library of Congress Permanent Collection of Graphic Design.
Alcalá graduated from Yale University with a BA in history and from the Yale School of Art with an MFA in graphic design. He lives with his wife in Alexandria, Virginia.
Stamp Artist, Stamp Designer
Chris Ware
Although Chris Ware’s drawings are often trapped in comic-strip grids, calling them comics barely expresses all that he instills in his touching, thought-provoking work. Ware is often credited with elevating the expressive potential of comics and graphic novels. His inspired compositions and acute sensitivity absorb readers into intimate scenarios.
Deeply influenced by the 20th century’s most legendary comic artists, Ware employs their media — Bristol board, India ink, pens, and brushes — to create meticulous graphic stories permeated with detailed imagery drawn from memories of his Omaha boyhood. Ware’s artwork also reflects his appreciation of the architectural richness of Chicago, his home since 1991.
While studying painting and sculpture at the University of Texas, Ware contributed to Art Spiegelman’s comics anthology, Raw. In the early 1990s, Ware “almost” earned a master’s degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago; it presented him with an honorary doctorate in 2019.
First published in the early 1990s, his book series, The Acme Novelty Library, offered serialized stories that would come to be called graphic novels. Ware’s books, each years in the making, include Jimmy Corrigan — the Smartest Kid on Earth (2000), winner of the Guardian First Book Award; Building Stories (2012), a top-10 annual fiction selection of both the New York Times and Time magazine; and Rusty Brown (2019), a New York Times top-100 book. His Monograph (2017) was published by Rizzoli.
Ware has created comics plus more than 30 covers for The New Yorker, and was featured in a 2016 installment of Art21, on PBS. Worldwide gallery exhibitions have included the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Adam Baumgold Gallery, New York; and Galerie Martel, Paris. A retrospective exhibit that debuted at the Centre Pompidou in Paris tours Europe through 2025.
250 Years of Delivering (2025) is Ware’s first project for the U.S. Postal Service.