About This Stamp
Good times call for good wishes, and the U.S. Postal Service gets in on the act with the Neon Celebrate! stamp. Bringing an extra wish for happiness to anyone celebrating a special time, this stamp features a brilliantly colored design crafted out of neon and glass that adds a spark to greeting cards, invitations, and gift-bearing envelopes and packages. No matter the occasion—birthday, anniversary, engagement, wedding, new job, retirement—this stamp will add another congratulatory wish to the good times being acknowledged.
Since the early 20th century, designers have made use of the fact that neon, argon, and a few other gases, glow when an electrical charge passes through them. In 1910, French scientist Georges Claude (1870-1960) first presented the neon lamp to the public in Paris. During the 1920s, neon signs became a popular form of advertising in the United States after the Packard Motor Car dealership in Los Angeles displayed the first documented neon commercial sign in the country.
Today, in addition to creating signage, artists work with neon as an expressive medium, filling and shaping glass tubes into an infinite variety of colorful images for exhibit.
The Neon Celebrate! stamp is being issued as a Forever® stamp. Forever stamps are always equal in value to the current First-Class Mail one-ounce rate.
Stamp Art Director, Stamp Designer
Phil Jordan
Phil Jordan grew up in New Bern, North Carolina, and attended East Carolina University. After Army service in Alaska, he graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University with a degree in visual communications. He worked in advertising and in design at a trade association before joining Beveridge and Associates, Inc., where he provided art direction for corporate, institutional, and government design projects. A partner in the firm, he left after 18 years to establish his own design firm where he managed projects for USAir, NASA, McGraw-Hill, IBM, and Smithsonian Books, among others. He was Design Director of Air & Space/Smithsonian magazine for 15 years. His work appeared in numerous exhibitions and publications such as Graphis and Communications Arts. A past president of the Art Directors Club of Metropolitan Washington, he was an art director for the U.S. Postal Service from 1991 to 2014. A resident of Falls Church, Virginia, he is a retired glider pilot and a member of the Skyline Soaring Club.