“The Philatelic Bureau of MaltaPost chose to reflect the magnitude of the upcoming Olympics – the biggest sporting event in the world,” explains Joseph Gafá, CEO at MaltaPost plc. “With 26 sports in play, 10,500 athletes taking part and millions of spectators watching the action, the 2012 Games are set to be one of the largest ever. Thus we believe it is important for Malta to highlight such important international activities, especially as some of our top sportspeople will also be representing Malta in London.”
The two stamps highlight two very important focuses of this year’s Olympics – its logo and its mascot.
The logo is a representation of the number 2012, with the Olympic Rings embedded within the zero. It was designed to have a flexible colour palate so as to enable corporate sponsors to integrate their own colours, but the standard hues are green, magenta, orange and blue. The logo will be used on MaltaPost’s €0.37 stamp.
Meanwhile, one of the Games’ two Official Mascots is Wenlock and he will take up pole position on MaltaPost’s €2.11 stamp. Wenlock and his co-mascot Mandeville (who will represent the Paralympic Games), were chosen from designs submitted by over 100 different international agencies. Wenlock’s design incorporates a London taxi light, a camera that allows him to record everything and friendship bands in the five colours of the Olympic Rings.
The set ‘London 2012 Olympic Games’ was designed by Sean Cini and was issued as miniature sheet bearing two stamps with values of €0.37 and €2.11. The sheet measures 120mm x 80mm, the stamps measure 44mm x 31mm, and they have a perforation of 13.9 x 14.0 (comb.). The stamp has been offset with the watermark of the Maltese Cross and was printed by Printex Ltd.
The set will be available as from 27th July from all Post Offices in Malta and Gozo.
