On January 20, Posti will release new stamps for Valentine's Day and winter greetings. The Finnish flag, a popular theme, will once again be seen on the stamps commemorating Finland's centenary. The 100th anniversary of Lions Club International will also be acknowledged with its own miniature sheet.
This year's Valentine's Day stamps were selected through a contest. The blue hearts by graphic designer Ari Kivi are ideal for Finland's jubilee year.
"The playful combinations of blue hearts create an end result that captures my mental image of Finnish friendship. The formations of hearts depict different degrees and forms of friendship and caring," explains Kivi.
"Poster design is the art form closest to my heart, but I consider postage stamps to be part of the same category. As it is often said: if it works on a matchbox, it works as a poster. I think that if you were to enlarge them, those postage stamps would pretty much be posters," says first-time stamp designer Kivi.
The Valentine's Day stamps are domestic no-value indicator stamps, and they are sold in a booklet of five stamps.
This year, the theme of the Europe-wide EUROPA stamp series is castles. As Posti recently released a booklet of stamps depicting old castles, Anssi Kähärä's Snow Castle offers a new viewpoint to the subject.
"I could not find the right picture of a snow castle anywhere, so I built a castle myself in Kymijoki, by the village of Iitti," says Kähärä. "I had amazing luck with the shooting conditions, as the evening sunset was absolutely beautiful."
The sheet contains fifteen domestic no-value indicator stamps.
Finland's centenary will be visible in many ways, and postage stamps are no exception. The jubilee year will begin with the Finnish National Flag stamps illustrated by Ossi Hiekkala.
The Finnish flag first flew on the Reconstruction work - Finnish Flag stamp from 1941. The stamp, drawn by Signe Hammarsten Jansson, was part of a Finnish Red Cross series used to raise funds for charity.
The Finnish national flag sheet contains fifteen domestic no-value indicator stamps.
Lions Club International is celebrating its 100th anniversary. The organization's charity work will be acknowledged with a miniature sheet of two domestic no-value indicator stamps designed by Klaus Welp. The stamps depict the organization's pins from around the world. "They express internationality, colour and diversity," Welp says.
The organization works actively at the local level through the various Lions Clubs. In Finland, it has operated for 67 years: the first club was founded in Helsinki in 1950. Finland's 925 Lions Clubs have just over 24,000 members.
The goal of the Finnish Lions Clubs for 2014-2018 is to serve 1.8 million people. Proceeds from the Red Feather campaign are donated in their entirety to work preventing the marginalization of youth. The benefactor of the campaign is President of the Republic Sauli Niinistö.
The Lions organization will celebrate its 100th anniversary on June 7, 2017.
All stamps available for sale are featured in Posti's online shop.
