As a youngster, Los Angeles-area artist Michelle Muñoz loved communicating with her cousins via cards and letters sent through the mail before the family members adapted to social media.
The approaching holidays offer a way to revive that tradition. Snail mail, Muñoz said, “is a nice thing. It reminds me of growing up. It’s like, when is the letter going to arrive? When you write a letter, it takes time and it’s more personal.”
The holiday cards she and countless others across the country will mail this year will bear the U.S. Postal Service’s 2024 “Holiday Joy” series, a set of four stamps featuring flowers and ornaments. For Muñoz, this year’s series is more special than most, not only because they echo her Mexican American upbringing – but because she herself helped design them.
Reflections of underrepresented communities have become a regular feature of postage stamps, such as the postal service’s Black Heritage and Lunar New Year collections. Artists like Muñoz and Antonio Alcalá, the U.S. Postal Service art director who recruited her to help create the holiday stamp, are another way the agency indirectly promotes such efforts.
“It’s important to me to try to bring in a more diverse representation of artists,” said Alcalá, a graphic designer in Washington, D.C., who joined the agency part-time after serving on its citizens’ stamp advisory committee, which recommends subjects for future consideration as stamp images.
For example,…
