See how Summer Harvest stamp designs came to be: Linn's Buzz

By Joe O'Donnell

1. Evolution of a stamp design

Artist Michael Doret, designer of the U.S. Postal Service's Summer Harvest stamps due out July 11, showed off the design stages of the stamps on his Alphabet Soup blog in January.

"When I started working on this new project I wanted to differentiate the stamps from each other as much as possible," Doret writes. "I started by trying to have fun with different elements such as the 'USA' and the denominations, and by choosing different color palettes."

See his sketches and different color palettes here.

Doret is a graphic artist and lettering designer whose work has appeared on album covers by the legendary rock group Kiss, magazine covers including Time and TV Guide, and as the logo for the New York Knicks professional basketball team.

2. Scientific stamps

"Physics experiments that children can perform at home are illustrated on five stamps from the Netherlands."

3. Scott 5000

"The nondenominated (71¢) Wedding Cake stamp is Scott 5000. If you’re rolling your eyes at this point, thinking that the U.S. Postal Service is a profligate issuer of stamps, hang on a minute. Let’s take a step back and inject some perspective into this somewhat dubious milestone."

4. Looking back at the first U.S. Priority Mail stamp

"On July 20, 1989, the United States Postal Service issued a stamp to celebrate the 20th anniversary of man’s first landing on the moon."

5. Hot topics

Read the top three stories of the last seven days:

1. Jenny Invert Locket Copy sold to Virginia coin collector
2. ‘The stamp of controversy’: the 1917 unwatermarked 30¢ orange Franklin stamp, perforated 10
3. USPS unable to show savings from stamps printed on unsoakable paper