Voices of Canada — Limited Edition Stamps
Student ProjectProject Overview
Voices of Canada is a limited-edition stamp series honouring four influential Canadian women: Mary Ann Shadd, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Kenojuak Ashevak, and Doris Anderson. Posterized portraits were chosen to fill a gap in who gets remembered on a stamp.
Each portrait is bold enough to read at postage size, but still specific to the woman it represents.
My Contributions
Research: Read into each subject's life and work so the portraits stayed accurate and respectful.
Ideation: Settled on a posterized style that would hold together as a series without flattening four different lives into one look.
Illustration: Drew the portraits digitally, then built complementary backgrounds and a light texture so the set feels unified.
Colour: Picked palettes that suit each story without competing across the sheet.
Outcome: Four stamps that invite a closer look at journalism, activism, Inuit art, and the women's rights movement.
Design Notes
Vibrant, posterized colour keeps the portraits contemporary and readable at a small scale. The series focuses on women of colour and Indigenous figures who are still underrepresented in Canadian philately.
Backgrounds stay secondary: they support the face, add a little pattern, and get out of the way. The portraits do the talking.