USPS Stamp Designer Wreaked Havoc With Satirical Stamps
MARCH 31, 2008
CARLSBAD, CA (TNA) – Back in the mid-’80s, when a letter from Stockholm arrived several weeks late with the words “Mail delayed due to war in Afghanistan” stamped on it, the American recipient called the Swedish Embassy to complain. Why, they wanted to know, would a letter from Sweden be delayed due to a war the country had no part in?
Visual Lunacy Society The Visual Lunacy Society, led by satirical stamp designer Carl Herrman, has created more than 80 spoofy stamps in its 26 years of existence.
Turns out the Swedish Embassy wanted to know the same thing.
Sweden, after all, was a neutral country. The embassy contacted the U.S. State Department, which couldn’t provide any answers until they tracked down the maker of the stamp, an obscure stateside organization with a curious name: The Visual Lunacy Society.
“The Visual Lunacy Society had a little fun on their mail,” says Carl Herrman of the befuddled Swedes.
Herrman, 67, is founder of the Visual Lunacy Society, or VLC, an organization that creates and promotes the use of satirical rubber stamps in the workplace.
The Carlsbad, Calif., resident began the society in 1982 while working for a think tank in Washington, D.C., where he saw just how joylessly some people could approach their jobs.
“I was absolutely beside myself with how serious this world was,” Herrman recalls. “And part of being serious is the rubber stamp. It wields a lot of power.”
To tweak a humorless bureaucracy, he began producing absurdist rubber stamps and distributing them to friends and colleagues. The stamps became a hit and Herrman cobbled the most enthusiastic users into a loose federation called the Visual Lunacy Society.
“My stamps are very popular with people who are deprived of humor in the workplace,” Herrman says, adding that the majority of members are academics, civil servants and lawyers.
Of the more than 80 stamps that Herrman has produced, many take political jibes, both subtle and blunt. One stamp reads “Please resubmit in Arabic,” with the phrase written in both Arabic and English. Another declares “The People’s Republic of Santa Monica,” complete with a utopian sunburst seal.
Herrman explains that he created the Santa Monica stamp in response to intense criticism the city received for being a playground for the rich while failing to provide housing for the poor.
Visual Lunacy Society The Visual Lunacy Society stamps made sure the mail got there ... eventually.
The stamp became wildly popular with locals, among them the mayor of Santa Monica, who, according to Herrman, used it in his official correspondence.
Other stamps are less political, but no less absurd. For example, one VLC stamp, showing the profile of a slack-jawed fish, declares “Kansas School of Oceanography,” and includes the slogan, “Located midway between the Atlantic and Pacific.”
Herrman chuckles at the inanity of the slogan. “As if the location would be an advantage,” he remarks.
One resident Kansan, however, became particularly fond of the stamp: a University of Kansas professor who happened to teach an oceanography class. According to Herrman, the bemused professor used the stamp on all his university mail.
While none of Herrman’s stamps have gotten him in legal trouble, one did earn a friend a phone call from the lawyer for the man’s satirically-impaired ex-wife.
The VLC had issued a series of stamps that Herrman thought would help people collect on bills, and a friend used one of the stamps – it simply read “Pay or die” – on a letter to collect money from his recently divorced wife.
The woman took the stamp to be a threat and contacted her lawyer, who placed the call to Herrman’s friend to cease and desist.
“He got out of that one OK,” Herrman says.
In the heyday of the Visual Lunacy Society from 1983 to 1985, the group had as many as 500 members and a board of directors. It also put out a regular newsletter that trumpeted commemorative stamps for such events – real or perceived – as the United States’ “invasion” of both Kansas and the island of Palau.
Visual Lunacy Society The Brahmapootra Convention and Visitors Bureau can thank the VLC for an increase in tourists.
In fact, the VLC sent two emissaries to a tiny island in Palau to present the chief with custom-made stamps.
“Palau was getting a lot of money from the United States back then,” Herrman explains. “And we imagined how much fun the chief would have stamping all of his letters to Washington with our stamps.”
In another issue of the newsletter, Herrman offered a free veal cutlet to anyone who purchased $100 or more in stamps. Surprisingly, several people took advantage of the offer and Herrman held a drawing to determine the lucky winner.
A married couple on the campus of San Jose State University won the drawing and Herrman dutifully mailed off the cutlet, wrapped in tinfoil, via overnight express. A few weeks later, he received a newspaper photo of the winners dining in open-air splendor on their prized flank of veal.
These days, there isn’t much to the Visual Lunacy Society. The newsletter is ancient history and the board of directors has long since disbanded. Herrman no longer sells his stamps and he can’t say how many members are still affixing irony to their official documents.
Not that he’s the least bit wistful.
These days, he’s too busy making legitimate stamps, as in U.S. Postal Service, 37-cent, First Class postage stamps. Herrman works as an art director for the U.S. Postal Service and has designed some of the most recognized stamps in the USPS over the past several years.
Visual Lunacy Society Next time you're in Palau, stop by VLC world headquarters.
Herrman, for example, designed the 37-cent Snowy Egret stamp, which was issued in 2003 and had a run of 2 billion. More recently, he designed the Dr. Seuss commemorative stamps that had a run of 172 million.
“I’ve totally lost interest in doing rubber stamps,” he says, “because I’m too busy doing real stamps.”
Herrman, nonetheless, has managed to make a little mischief with “real” stamps. Using authentic postage stamps of military dictators from around the world, he created new stamps by superimposing his friends’ faces on the dictators’ bodies. He then sent the stamps to his friends as gag gifts.
“My friends loved seeing themselves on stamps, wearing all these medals,” he says.
In fact, a few friends like the stamps so much, they used them as postage and managed to send off a few letters.
“The stamps look absolutely legal,” Herrman says proudly. “And they are legal. They just don’t have any value.”
For now, those interested in Herrman’s stamps will have to settle for “real” ones he designs for the USPS. He neither sells nor designs his spoof stamps on a commercial basis.
As for all the rubber stamp companies out there, Herrman says none of them spoof the bureaucracy like the Visual Lunacy Society.
“There’re tons of rubber stamp companies and tons of rubber stamp magazines and I hate all of them,” he says. “They all have cute little happy smiley faces, teddy bears, and flowers and things.”
“Mine are meant to be taken very seriously, in a humorous sort of way.”
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