London, England

Kudos to Catharine Brandy (nee Hildebrand; originally from the rural hamlet of Plum Coulee Manitoba; and a senior design colleague at Circle for over a decade) on the rocking success of the UK’s Beatles stamps—not only have these become the country’s best-selling (non-royalty) postage stamps, they have also won a Gold Cube at this year’s New York Art Directors Club (87th Annual Awards), and have been selected as ‘best of category’ in I.D. magazine’s 54th annual design review. Cath has been a design director with Britain’s Royal Mail for the past half-dozen years—for this issue she worked with the talented designer Michael Johnson of London’s johnson banks.

The six stamps (marking the 50th anniversary of Lennon and McCartney’s first meeting in 1957) portray the ‘Fab Four’ in casual stacks of LPs, each topped with an essential album from the band’s brief history.