Derry Noyes knows stamps. Not as a collector, but, in many ways, much more so.
Noyes has been a staff member of the United States Postal Service since 1981 as an advisor, designer and art director. For more than two decades, she designed and provided the art direction of dozens of United States stamps and stamp products.
When Stamp Services offered Noyes the commission to design the Charles and Ray Eames set of stamps in 2005, she jumped at the chance. Noyes has a personal connection to the Eames family as her father, industrial designer and architect Eliot Noyes, helped launch the career of Charles Eames when, as curator of industrial design at the Museum of Modern Art, he awarded him first prize in the 1940 Organic Design in Home Furnishings competition. As family friends, the Eames couple spent many evenings discussing design and watching films with Noyes and her father while she was growing up.
Noyes wanted to create an unconventional design of the commissioned Eames stamps while showing the breadth of the Eames’ portfolio that spans many disciplines from furniture design and architecture to film making.
“I wanted to think outside the box the way they did and design the Eames stamps different than the others, ” said Noyes.
The standard book is designed with a single image but Noyes, along with the Eames Foundation selected 16 images to represent the scope of the Eameses accomplishments, including the iconic La Chaise, the Eames House, the Crosspatch textiles, the House of Cards and even the film Tops. Another unique feature of the stamp design is the elimination of four stamps in the middle for the solid red Eames logo.
“With so many things going on visually from the different design disciplines to the use of graphics, photography and line drawings it just made sense to put the logo in the middle rather than on the sleeve,” said Noyes.
The stamps are a well-deserved tribute to the dynamic design duo whose work is still as prevalent and popular today as it was when Charles and Ray Eames were in business.
