Stamp Project
Our project brief was provided by the company Baxter & Bailey, to design 4-8 stamps for a specified theme, the theme I was given was ‘Hammer Horror.’
Hammer Horror refers to a selection of gothic horror films created by Hammer Film Production, a British Film company, between the mid-1950s and 1970s. The company, founded November 1934, still operates today, based in London it continues to produce horror movies. This year on 5 November 2024 will be the studios 90th Anniversary.
Hammer Horror refers to a selection of gothic horror films created by Hammer Film Production, a British Film company, between the mid-1950s and 1970s. The company, founded November 1934, still operates today, based in London it continues to produce horror movies. This year on 5 November 2024 will be the studios 90th Anniversary.
I began with some research into stamps, taking pictures of different examples to get a better understanding of their design and possible compositions.
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Hammer Horror Visual Research
I began my visual research with the fonts that Hammer has used in its title sequences, and planned to watch some of the films to gain a better perspective of the visuals to include in my stamps.
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I also looked into more modern illustrations / posters that were created for some of Hammer’s iconic horror films, along with other promotional materials.
Poster above by Graham Humphreys. Below (left) DVD box art, below (right) movie poster
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Watching the Films (Dracula 1958)
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Initial Sketches - I began my initial sketches in a sketchbook, looking into how I could incorporate the fonts used in Hammer’s title sequences, along with possible compositions for stamps based around the first Dracula film
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First idea inspired by images from the film using a limited colour palette, and the template provided with the brief
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Refined digital thumbnails and ideas
I wanted to use a limited colour palette across the stamps, so their designs would look good when next to each other and on their own.
The anniversary element of my designs would become a theme throughout this project, I designed the stamps with the idea that they would be commemorative of the studios 90 years.
The anniversary element of my designs would become a theme throughout this project, I designed the stamps with the idea that they would be commemorative of the studios 90 years.
Development
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While I liked the composition of these initial ideas, I thought they were too clean and for a final version I redrew the character and made the image appear worn and aged.
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My second design featured the original idea from my sketches, now refined to better resemble scenes from the film.
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The third stamp is based on the title sequence for Dracula, and features a statue from it along with the font used for the film.
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The fourth stamp features an old logo for Hammer film productions, that also appeared in a title sequence.
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The last two stamps are based on another popular Hammer film, The Curse of Frankenstein.
Final Stamps
Hand Stamps
I created two designs for a hand stamp, a basic circular design and a second square design based on a film reel. Both of these feature Hammer Film Production’s current logo as well as ‘90 years, for their anniversary, they are dated 5 November as that is the date the studio was founded and the location London, England is that of the studio itself.
Packaging
