Greg Breeding’s art has sold hundreds of thousands of copies, easily. It’s traveled across the entire country. You might even have some in your house. But you might not know it—because Breeding’s art is approximately one square inch.
Breeding, president, co-founder, and product studio director for Charlottesville’s The Journey Group, designs postage stamps. Since 2013, he’s served as one of four art directors contracted to the U.S. Postal Service, honoring everything from stage magic and dragons to Jimi Hendrix and Batman.
“The opportunity to design a stamp is on most every graphic designer’s bucket list,” Breeding says. “We like to say that they are ‘miniature works of art.’”
Art directors supervise every aspect of a stamp’s design. Sometimes, Breeding secures image rights, selects artwork, and arranges type to create the stamp himself. For other assignments, he figures out what look the stamp needs, finds the right artist to collaborate with, and helps them create the final images.
“Even when we commission artists, we are still melding the original art into the stamp format with special consideration to typography, color, cropping, and how it all comes together,” Breeding says. He and his artistic collaborators often toil on a stamp for a year or two to meet the USPS’s demanding standards.
Getting artists comfortable with such a tiny canvas can be a challenge, Breeding says. But the small size, he says, “encourages us to explore new ways of creating innovative design while also being visually accessible to the public.”
Breeding grew up in Bristol, Virginia, cultivating a love of art alongside his dad, who painted for fun. While studying at what’s now VCUArts in Richmond, Breeding kindled a passion for Swiss modernist design that continues today in his annual vacations to Switzerland. (He also loved the “Batman” TV show as a kid; getting to design those stamps in 2014 to honor the character’s 75th birthday, he says, registered an 11 on an excitement scale of 1 to 10.)
The past few years haven’t been kind to the postal service, and Breeding says stamp design can only do so much to help: “While it’s true that postage stamps have high visibility to the public, the related revenue isn’t significant to the bigger issues.”
But Breeding’s doing his part, both artistically and commercially. Since he started designing stamps, “I make it a part of my business life to write more postcards and notecards, especially to thank our colleagues and clients,” he says. “I have come to deeply appreciate a handwritten note.”