A postage stamp is an important matter. Though it is very small in size it bears a decisive message….The tiny square connects the hearts of the sender and the receiver, reducing the distances. It is a bridge between people and countries. The postage stamp passes all frontiers. It reaches men in prisons, asylums and hospitals. The small postage stamps become big works of art available to everyone, young and old, rich and poor, sane or sick, learned or illiterate, free or imprisoned. –Friedensreich Hundertwasser 

Sergio Baradat, a global leader in the postage design world, has two more reasons to celebrate his involvement with this miniature but high-volume art form. Not only was he featured in LGBTQNation’s Hispanic Heritage Month article for his designs for the U.N.’s 2016 Free & Equal collection (scroll down) which expresses LGBTQ+ love and joy; he also designed the UN’s the 2023 World Mental Health Day set of stamps (top and below), which was issued this week.

Sergio was born in Cuba, raised in Miami, and now resides happily in New York. He has been honored with awards from the American Institute of Graphic Art, the Art Directors Club of Los Angeles and New York, Print Magazine, Communication Arts, American Illustration and American Photography among others. His work is in the permanent collections of The Cooper Hewitt Museum of Design, NY; The Postal Museum, Smithsonian, Wash, D.C.; and The Cuban Heritage Collection, Miami, FL, to name a few. He is currently serving as Art Director for The United Nations Postal Administration; office of Global Graphics and Communications, a post he has held since 2012. He graciously found time for a phone interview this Wednesday.

Peggy Roalf: So how did you first become interested in stamps?

Sergio Baradat: I got interested in stamps because my family received lots of mail from Cuba, and the stamps were so different they fascinated me. By junior high school I had started a collection, which grew by quantum leaps because customers who came to my parents’ pharmacy—having heard I started a collection—would tear off the corners of the letters they got from all over and give them to me as I did my school homework at the counter.

PR: What was your first postage design project?

SB: Funny, it was not really a postage stamp design, but a silkscreen poster I made in the 80’s to honor the 1904 Carmine Palm Tree stamp from Cuba. By then I was a freelance designer playing around with different printing processes. This stamp is so beautiful that it made a good subject. (above, left)

My first real postage stamp design was in 2005. I got a phone call from an art director at the USPS who said, “I’ve got a project for you—but it’s really small. Would you like to do a postage stamp?”

The subject was the 37¢ Mambo stamp from the series: Let’s Dance – Bailemos (above, right). The series was created by four different Hispanic artists. I loved the assignment, which went really well, and it ended up getting a lot of media attention. To the point that collectors would send me stamped self-addressed envelopes and ask me to autograph them and mail them back. I was even presented with the keys to the City of Coral Gables by their mayor; it was a wonderful and crazy time. This, such an amazing trajectory from the counter of my parent’s pharmacy to The Smithsonian’s Postal Museum in Washington DC where it is now part of their permanent Collection. 

PR: And the rest is history?

SB: It is, and I’m so grateful for this launch into a field that I find endlessly fascinating. I subsequently did three more USPS projects. Then in 2012, the art director at the United Nations, Rorie Katz, engaged me to create the International Year of Forests series (below). That series won the Asiago Award in Philately in Italy. Soon after, an opening for a permanent position at the UN came up so I applied, and here I am; still enchanted by the discipline hundreds of stamps later. Above: the U.N.’s 2016 Free & Equal collection

PR: Can you summarize, in a byte, what for you is the allure of postage stamp design?

SB: Postage stamps occupy a global stage, encompassing illustration, design, photography, typography, and major world themes. So the art one creates isn’t just decorative; there’s a certain level of gravitas. 

For more about Sergio’s art ad practice, you can visit his website, and Instagram @sergiobaradatart And if you'd like to have a beer with Sergio, come to The Party, at Angel Orensanz Foundation, on Thursday, November 9th. Info

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