Solar Initiative Designs 2011 Children's Stamps

Communication design

“Give kids a safe home” is this year’s theme for the children’s stamps campaign. The stamps are designed by Solar Initiative and were published this month to show children building a home together.

By Editor Design.nl / 24-11-2011

Every autumn 7 and 8 graders (10/11 year olds) in the Netherlands sell children’s stamps door to door to collect money for good causes related to children. This year they fetched a record ten million euros.

PostNL preferred a photographic approach for this year’s theme “Give kids a safe home.” Key elements of the design had to be hope, happiness and accessibility for a broad audience.    

Miguel Gori, creative director and partner of Solar Initiative, took on this task with a team made up of Rob Giesendorf, Julia Sophia Kind and Matteo Venet. They wanted to show a safe environment, a place where children feel protected physically, emotionally and socially.    

The final design covers an entire sheet with six stamps: children photographed from above and building a home together. “The children are working on something positive related to the key message: a safe home,” says Gori, also the photographer for this project.   

The “home” they’re building consists of pieces of paper on the floor photographed from above. “The positioning of the camera was crucial,” says Gori. “This way we could create a photograph with a graphic image. The two core specialties of our agency.”  

 The complete sheet with six stamps shows six children – exactly one in each stamp – building the house together. Although they seem to be working together, they were actually photographed one by one. “Photographing children isn’t easy,” says Gori, “especially the very young ones. You can’t let them ‘act’ for too long.”