new work – Royal Mail Christmas Competition stamp pack.

Christmas seems to have come early at totalcontent. Last week we brought you Royal Mail's Madonna and Child stamp presentation pack. This week, we unwrap the children's Christmas stamp competition pack, charmingly designed by our good friends at NB Studio.

Here, we were asked to tell the story of the nationwide hunt for designs striking enough to grace first- and second-class during the 2013 festive period. The challenge was open to children in the UK aged 4–11, and there were prizes of £100, £500 and £1000 to be won. This is only the third time Royal Mail have staged a kids' stamp competition, and the response was overwhelming, with over 240,000 entries covering all kinds of Yuletide subject matter in every conceivable style.


These were cut down to a longlist of 140, followed by a shortlist of 24. Then, a judging panel headed by HRH Prince Charles and including children's author Lauren Child and Tasveer Shemza, who was a six-year-old-schoolgirl when she created one of Royal Mail's first-ever Christmas stamps back in 1966, got to work. The eventual winners were Molly Robson (7) and Rosie Hargreaves (10).