About This Stamp
The U.S. Postal Service invites your imagination! You can personalize the crazy characters on the 20-stamp Message Monsters pane with included self-adhesive accessories.
Each monster’s mode, mood, and message is customizable — to the delight of sender and recipient alike. Your makeover magic transforms the four different designs into countless creature creations. Postage stamps have never been so interactive!
With accessories aplenty, you can adorn a roundish, rosy rascal; dress up a silly, striped imp; enhance a squiggly, squid-ly critter; and add flair to a reddish rapscallion. Deck the monsters out with hats, hearts, stars, crazy daisies, and more. There are even cartoony voice balloons and thought bubbles with salutations and exclamations. Countless personalizations are possible with some stick-to-itiveness.
Art director Antonio Alcalá designed the pane with original artwork by Elise Gravel, author–illustrator of popular children’s books.
Message Monsters 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
Antonio Alcalá
Antonio Alcalá served on the Postmaster General’s Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee from 2010 until 2011, when he left to become an art director for the U.S. Postal Service's stamp development program.
He is founder and co-owner of Studio A, a design practice working with museums and arts institutions. His clients include: the National Gallery of Art, Library of Congress, National Portrait Gallery, National Museum of Women in the Arts, The Phillips Collection, and Smithsonian Institution. He also lectures at colleges including the Corcoran College of Art + Design, SVA, Pratt, and MICA.
In 2008, his work and contributions to the field of graphic design were recognized with his selection as an AIGA Fellow. He has judged international competitions for the Society of Illustrators, American Illustration, AIGA, and Graphis. Alcalá also serves on the Smithsonian National Postal Museum and Poster House Museum’s advisory councils. His designs are represented in the AIGA Design Archives, the National Postal Museum, and the Library of Congress Permanent Collection of Graphic Design.
Alcalá graduated from Yale University with a BA in history and from the Yale School of Art with an MFA in graphic design. He lives with his wife in Alexandria, Virginia.
Stamp Artist
Elise Gravel
Elise Gravel’s playful and joyful illustration style confirms her own self-description as “a kid at heart.” Obsessed with strange lifeforms, she finds endless fascination with slugs, rats, and even eccentric people, and started drawing them before turning three. She has never stopped, constantly adding her own inventive creatures into the mix.
A prolific illustrator, Gravel infuses her work with humor and creativity that speaks directly to young minds. The mother of two is the author–illustrator of over 50 children’s books. These include the Disgusting Critters series, which covers toads, worms, head lice, and spiders (and the aforementioned slugs and rats). Her Olga books feature the silly, informative exploits of a young scientist.
A native of Montreal, Quebec, where she studied graphic arts, Gravel writes books in both French and English. One of her French-language books, La clé à molette, won Canada’s prestigious Governor General’s Literary Award. Her books and graphic novels have been translated into a dozen languages.
Gravel draws on a digital tablet and with any and all sorts of markers. She encourages both children and adults to regularly exercise their creative muscles. By getting ideas out and welcoming the inevitable accidents, she believes the mind becomes receptive to more and more ideas.
Message Monsters (2021) is Gravel’s first project for the U.S. Postal Service.
