100 YEARS OF GENERAL RELATIVITY STAMPS
Graphic Design / Illustration / Print
We had the honour of working for one of the greatest minds in science; having created the branding for the Stephen Hawking Foundation we wanted to help the Foundation with their aims of improving public knowledge about Cosmology and Motor Neuron Disease.
As we also work with the Isle of Man Post Office, designing stamp collections for their global market, we brought our two clients together with one perfect project.
Our proposition was to create a set of stamps to celebrate 100 years of General Relativity, focusing on the work of Professor Stephen Hawking. As well as images of the two great minds, Einstein and Hawking; we created four highly detailed illustrations representing Gravitational Waves, Black Holes, Black Holes Colliding and the Hawking Radiation theory.
We defined our art style based on mathematical theory visualisations. The colour palette was inspired by the cosmos; we wanted to use light, and dark and the playful iridescence of light, so we used a holographic foil on the stamps to make them shine with every colour of the visible spectrum.
It was such a great honour to work with Professor Hawking, but to be able to create a project like this has been a career highlight for any of us. We are an agency with a strong focus on charity, so this is a great achievement for us all.
100 YEARS OF GENERAL RELATIVITY STAMPS
Graphic Design / Illustration / Print
We had the honour of working for one of the greatest minds in science; having created the branding for the Stephen Hawking Foundation we wanted to help the Foundation with their aims of improving public knowledge about Cosmology and Motor Neuron Disease.
As we also work with the Isle of Man Post Office, designing stamp collections for their global market, we brought our two clients together with one perfect project.
Our proposition was to create a set of stamps to celebrate 100 years of General Relativity, focusing on the work of Professor Stephen Hawking. As well as images of the two great minds, Einstein and Hawking; we created four highly detailed illustrations representing Gravitational Waves, Black Holes, Black Holes Colliding and the Hawking Radiation theory.
We defined our art style based on mathematical theory visualisations. The colour palette was inspired by the cosmos; we wanted to use light, and dark and the playful iridescence of light, so we used a holographic foil on the stamps to make them shine with every colour of the visible spectrum.
It was such a great honour to work with Professor Hawking, but to be able to create a project like this has been a career highlight for any of us. We are an agency with a strong focus on charity, so this is a great achievement for us all.
Stamp One
Professor Albert Einstein
Our first stamp features Professor Albert Einstein, whose equation E=Mc2 has become perhaps the best known equation in physics. It expresses the equivalence between mass and energy that is predicted by the special theory of relativity.
Stamp Two
Collision of two black holes
Our second stamp features Professor Stephen Hawking and his equation S=A/4. This equation expresses the entropy of a black hole in terms of the surface area of its event horizon. The meaning of the entropy of a black hole is that it expresses the number of ways in which a black hole could be formed given that all we can see from the outside is its event horizon
Stamp Three
Illustration of two black holes colliding
Our third stamp features an illustration of the generation of gravitational waves produced by two colliding black holes. LIGO, or the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, recently made the very first direct detection of gravitational waves.
Stamp Four
Professor Stephen Hawking
Our fourth stamp features an illustration of Hawking Radiation. This is radiation that is produced by black holes. Until Hawking’s work, it was thought that black holes absorbed absolutely everything and that nothing could escape from them. Hawking showed that black holes emit thermal radiation much as a lump of hot metal will glow when heated.
Stamp Five
Hawking Radiation
Our fifth stamp features an illustration of two black holes colliding. The trousers diagram shows the event horizons of each of the two black holes being surrounded by a new event horizon when the black holes collide and merge.
Stamp Six
Illustration of a Black Hole
Our sixth stamp features an illustration of a black hole. Spacetime outside the black hole is bent so as to form a bottomless pit into which the matter can fall and never escape. It is rather like an astronomical version of the pitcher plant: a carnivorous plant that insects can fall into and never escape.
