About This Stamp
On July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin achieved something that had long been confined to the realm of science fiction when they landed a spidery spacecraft named Eagle on the Moon. A worldwide audience watched and listened when Armstrong stepped onto the Moon’s surface and famously said, “That’s one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind.”
On the fiftieth anniversary of this first Moon landing, two stamp designs commemorated that historic milestone. One stamp features Armstrong’s iconic photograph of Aldrin in his spacesuit on the surface of the Moon. The other stamp, a photograph of the Moon taken in 2010 by Gregory H. Revera from his home in Madison, Alabama, shows the landing site of the lunar module, Eagle, in the Sea of Tranquility. The site is indicated on the stamp by a dot.
In May 1961, President John F. Kennedy had announced the goal of landing a man on the Moon before the end of the decade. Spurred by the Cold War-era competition with the Soviet Union, the United States government poured unprecedented resources into the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo space programs. Some 400,000 Americans worked to meet Kennedy’s seemingly impossible goal.
The Apollo 11 mission was celebrated around the world. In the fall of 1969, Armstrong, Aldrin, and Michael Collins, pilot of the command module Columbia, made a goodwill tour of 24 countries and had an audience estimated at more than 100 million people.
After Apollo 11, NASA completed five more Apollo missions through 1972 that landed men on the Moon. The United States remains the only country to have accomplished this remarkable feat.
Art director Antonio Alcalá designed the stamps and the stamp pane.
The 1969: First Moon Landing stamps are being issued as Forever® stamps. These Forever stamps will always be 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.