Examination of cultural heritage themed postage stamps and postage stamp design suggestions

Postage stamps are designs that contain design elements such as pictures, shapes, symbols, colours and text and carry a visual message. Stamps play an important role in promoting the culture and traditions of countries. Postage stamps are important graphic design products that reflect the art, music, literature, dance, sports, history and cultural elements of a country. It carries elements related to the social life, interest in art, touristic beauties and political orientations of the country where it is printed. Stamps, which generally contain images of national leaders, symbols and emblems of the country, images of famous people, images of animals, nature, sports, history or holidays, are transported from city to city and from country to country and are a very important visual communication element that is the architect of intercultural communication for the promotion of countries. became like that. At the same time, the images used on postage stamps are privileged design products from which we can obtain information about all historical processes from ancient times to the present. Stamps are versatile in terms of function and content. However, postage stamps have not received the necessary importance in the field of art and design as a means of visual communication. For this reason, not much research has been done on stamp designs and illustrations. In terms of brand city designs, postage stamps have a very important position in terms of promoting a country. For this reason, giving due importance to the design of a country's postage stamps can ensure that the social and cultural promotion of that country is carried out accurately and effectively. The aim of this research is to examine postage stamps with the theme of cultural assets, to emphasize how important they are for the promotion of a country, and to produce new original postage stamp design studies on the subject. In this research, qualitative research methods were taken into consideration and the relevant literature was scanned. In addition to the relevant sources in terms of graphic design of postage stamps on various themes from the past to the present, side sources, books, and magazines to complement the subject were obtained and examined. In order for the study to be a whole, visual scans were made, and the subject-images were collected after finding the images related to the subject. Original photographs were taken by obtaining materials in the relevant area. In the application part of the research, cultural assets included in the UNESCO World Cultural Heritage list were researched and new and original postage stamp designs were made using digital design programs suitable for the depiction of our cultural heritage. Keywords: Postage Stamp, Stamp Design, Cultural Assets, Graphic Design, Illustration