About This Stamp
The U.S. Postal Service celebrates America’s love of coffee with four stamps. Whether milky or dark as night, sweetened, flavored, or highly concentrated, many coffee drinks have one thing in common — they begin with espresso.
This booklet of 20 stamps features four unique designs illustrating popular espresso drinks — espresso, cappuccino, caffe latte, and caffe mocha. Capturing the inviting atmosphere of an early 20th-century café, each digital illustration was created with the style of 1920s and 1930s advertising posters in mind. The names of the espresso drinks appear in art deco-inspired lettering above or below each enticing cup.
Espresso drinking in the United States is at an all-time high. With the growing popularity of artisanal coffee shops, extensive research on the roasting and brewing process, and continued innovation in machinery to make the perfect cup, specialty coffee is better than it has ever been. When it comes to espresso, most Americans rely on a barista working at a coffeehouse to carefully craft their specialty drink, but at-home espresso machines are also growing in popularity. Whether a routine part of getting going in the morning or a reason to gather socially at a local café, drinking beverages made with espresso has become increasingly trendy.
Art director Greg Breeding designed the stamps with original artwork by Terry Allen.
The Espresso Drinks stamps are being issued as Forever® stamps. These Forever stamps are always equal in value to the current First-Class Mail® one-ounce price.
Stamp Art Director, Designer, and Typographer
Greg Breeding
Greg Breeding is a graphic designer and principal of Journey Group, a design company he co-founded in 1992, located in Charlottesville, Virginia. He was creative director until 2013, at which time he began serving as president and continued in that role through 2023.
Breeding’s fascination with modernism began while studying design at Virginia Commonwealth University. His affinity with the movement continues and motivates his ongoing advanced studies at the Basel School of Design in Switzerland most every summer.
As an art director for postage stamp design since 2012, Breeding has designed more than 100 stamps covering a diverse array of subjects, from Star Wars droids and Batman to Harlem Renaissance writers and the transcontinental railroad.
His work has been recognized in annual design competitions held by Graphis, AIGA, PRINT magazine, and Communication Arts.
Breeding lives in North Garden, Virginia, with his wife and enjoys nothing so much as frolicking on the floor with his grandchildren.
Stamp Artist
Terry Allen
Terry Allen grew up in the small fishing and yachting town of Marblehead, Massachusetts. After attending the School of Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse University, he began his professional career as a freelance illustrator in Boston in 1978.
Over the last 40 years, Allen has created illustrations, posters, and murals for hundreds of clients, including Nike, Major League Baseball, Simon & Schuster, Bloomingdale’s, The Boston Globe, and Rolling Stone. For almost a decade, he illustrated the column On Language for The New York Times Magazine. His work has been recognized by American Illustration, the ADDY Awards, the Associated Press, Graphis, the Society of Publication Designers, the American Institute of Graphic Arts, and others.
With a visual style that puts a modern spin on art deco designs, Allen’s illustrations also incorporate elements from 1950s and 1960s advertising along with a dash of abstract expressionism.
Allen currently teaches illustration and poster design at the School of Visual Arts in New York City and has held master workshops on illustration in China. He also works as a promoter for professional wrestling and music events and spent 44 years in the ring as a wrestler.
Allen lives in the Hudson Valley in New York. Espresso Drinks (2021) is his first stamp project for the U.S. Postal Service.