About This Stamp
The U.S. Postal Service celebrates our continued exploration of deep space with a captivating new Priority Mail® stamp.
Like a sprawling celestial nautilus located 32 million light-years from Earth, spiral galaxy NGC 628 provides clues to how star formation occurs, and galaxies evolve. Captured in unprecedented detail by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) in 2022, this and other images of spiral galaxies help scientists investigate the star formation cycle in galaxies on an unprecedented new scale and provide valuable new clues to the origins of our universe.
The giant spiral arms in the image show extended regions of gas and dust that appear red and orange. Scientists have noted that the structure of this spiral galaxy is repeated elsewhere in the universe, following similar wave patterns. Studying a variety of spiral galaxies will provide key insights about how galaxies build, maintain, and shut off star formation.
Art director Greg Breeding designed the stamp, using an image provided by NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), ESA (European Space Agency), CSA (Canadian Space Agency), STScI (Space Telescope Science Institute), Janice Lee (STScI), Thomas Williams (Oxford), and the PHANGS (Physics at High Angular resolution in Nearby GalaxieS) team.
Spiral Galaxy is being issued in a pane of four stamps.
Upon favorable review by the Postal Regulatory Commission, the stamp will be denominated at the new Priority Mail Flat Rate Envelope rate.
Stamp Art Director, Stamp Designer
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.