About This Stamp
In 2016 the U.S. Postal Service® issued a nondenominated, nonprofit-price stamp showcasing the letters “USA” in blue accompanied by a bright red star on a white background. This patriotic design with full letterforms and flourishes is a confident, playful, and celebratory treatment of one of our most familiar abbreviations. NONPROFIT ORG is printed across the bottom of the stamp.
Antonio Alcalá served as the art director and designed the stamp with Leslie Badani.
The USA stamp was issued in coils of 10,000.
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 Designer and Typographer
Leslie Badani
A native of Northern Virginia, Leslie Badani is the younger of two daughters whose parents emigrated from Bolivia in the 1970s. She spent much of her youth categorizing fonts and designing mock magazine covers. She graduated with honors from the Corcoran College of Art + Design in Washington, DC, in 2007, with a degree in graphic design.
Badani has since worked on many award-winning projects at Studio A in Alexandria, Virginia, and designed exhibitions, catalogs, and marketing materials for the National Gallery of Art, National Postal Museum, Textile Museum, Walters Art Museum, Smithsonian Books, and AIGA, among many others.
Working at Studio A with USPS Art Director Antonio Alcalá allowed Badani to participate in the design process of many U.S. commemorative stamps since 2011. Elvis Presley (2015) and Geometric Snowflakes (2015) were her first projects for the U.S. Postal Service®. She designed these and the 2016 USA (Nonprofit Org), 2017 Patriotic Nonprofit, and 2018 Frozen Treats stamps with Antonio Alcalá.