Deviantart Stamps

[Corrupted Unicorn]

This is a place to discuss good places to get stamps  Not strictly from Deviantart, custom-made stamps or stamps from other websites are also welcome! Basically, a general topic for digital philately!   
Please try to be a little more specific. Most stamps are from Deviantart, yes, but do you follow/obtain them from certain groups or stamp-making users? Got any favourites?

I admit I'm no expert at this  I got my stamps from a Deviantart group called Stamp-Heaven - literally the first link you get when you look for "deviantart stamps" on your searcher of choice  My collection is not too big, but that doesn't really speak of Stamp-Heaven's colelction size - I'm just a lil' picky with my stamp selections 

Do you have any particular choices when it comes to the sources of your stamps? Please share! 

[candycanearter07]

There's a big collection of stamps I used for my signature. It's linked in it too, on the "free stamps" button.

[cozy]

I came across these Honeycomb-style stamps here! These ones are a bit of a different take on the stamp idea, but I like them.

Other than that, on Deviantart Stamp-Kingdom has a lot of them

[Bede]

This is a collection of 11k+ DeviantArt stamps! I downloaded the ZIP, and have been sorting through the stamps on and off for a few weeks now to narrow it down to stamps I like, and want to add to my collection. Needless to say, it's extremely extensive, and I'd recommend it!

If you want DeviantArt stamps with modern edit styles and sensibilities, then I'd recommend searching "DeviantArt stamp edit" on tumblr. People are still making these to this day! My favorite examples of this "DeviantArt stamp with a modern edit style" subtype include these Fields of Mistria stamps, these Pokemon stamps and these stamps which are for a series I don't know about, but which are very cute!

[PurpleHello98]

I just like collecting them from other people's Web sites! I find a lot of Neocitizens have them along with buttons, blinkies and the like. Personally, I mostly do buttons with a few blinkies, but somewhere on an external hard drive I have some stamps!

[ValyceNegative]

@Bede whoa nelly now that's what I call a collection! 18k files and more! Gotta get it as soon as I get on computer.

Sadly I don't have any place of my own where to get DA stamps, especially the very old ones I remember when first joining DA. Though the thread has made me wonder, what was the start of the stamp trend? How did they come to be so popular, back then?

[Bede]

Though the thread has made me wonder, what was the start of the stamp trend? How did they come to be so popular, back then?

I Googled this, thinking there had to be recorded history, essay, big sort of something recounting how it all happened. But zip, zilch, nada!

So, I did some snooping myself. The oldest result for "DeviantArt stamp" I could find is this template from early 2006. In the description, the original poster says, "For use in creating all the little gif stamps you see around dA," which implies that they were already established. However, he also says, "Based on TheRyanFord's stamp idea," which may imply that this user was the originator of the concept?

TheRyanFord, upon looking at his profile, was the creative director and head of design for DeviantArt from around 2000 to 2012 -- meaning that the "stamp idea" likely came from when he was a part of DeviantArt staff. Seems he made a few stamps himself, but these are all from around 2009, well after zilla774's post. I could not find any earlier mentions of stamps on his profile, and it seemed the case ran cold.

So, of course, I did the only rational thing and personally emailed Ryan Ford, an award-winning designer who is probably very busy, to answer this incredibly niche question. Because I figured, well, there's no public record on the internet, so someone's gotta do it.

I will update this thread if he ever gets back to me!

[ValyceNegative]

@Bede xD that is amazing, just the perfect research to dedicate a webpage about.
Time ago I presented a video talking about styles and history of Clip Art to a friend of mine, and he replied here's a lot of digital ephemera that we took for granted when it was common to see but whose origin and story we have lost to time because it felt so unimportant at the time. In reality, keeping track on how similar things evolve help better understand humans in a more visceral, trivial level that bigger researches often skip. I was truly inspired from his words: before then, I thought I was just fixating on worthless details!

[echogecko]

ohhh i have a huge hoard of stamps!! i love stamps i wish i could use em on more sites :P
ive spent literal hours building my collection so i know some good places to get them 

alright, so if you use spacehey going through peoples profiles or searching up "stamps" or "stamp collection" on blogs and youll find a fair bit! most neocities sites have a stamp/blinkie/button sections

you can find a lot on tumblr too! especially original ones! some good tags to follow are "da stamps"/"deviant art stamps" "favicon" "page decor" "rentry"/"rentry graphics" and "web graphics"!(at least those are the ones i follow lol)

you can also follow thisdastampdoesnotexist if you want more stupid ones

[Bede]

So, of course, I did the only rational thing and personally emailed Ryan Ford, an award-winning designer who is probably very busy, to answer this incredibly niche question. Because I figured, well, there's no public record on the internet, so someone's gotta do it.

I will update this thread if he ever gets back to me!

WE HAVE A RESPONSE!! This is not a drill!

I have pasted Ryan Ford's reply below!

"Hi Azure,

Thanks for your email.
Yes I am the originator of the “DeviantArt Stamp.”
I originated it explicitly for promotion of the “DeviantArt Summit” which was held in Los Angeles in Jun of 2005.
I couldn’t exactly remember the exact dates so here’s a copy-paste description I came across:

On June 17 and 18, 2005, DeviantArt held their first convention, the deviantART Summit, at the Palladium in the Hollywood area of Los Angeles, California, United States. The summit consisted of several exhibitions by numerous artists, including artscene groups old and new at about 200 different booths. Giant projection screens displayed artwork as it was being submitted live to DeviantArt, which was receiving 50,000 new images daily at the time.

The Summit was a massive project at the time, for all of us who were mostly volunteers or underpaid part-timers all devoted to what we felt was a worthy cause. I was tasked with building a promotional package, and was simultaneously going to college to study design. On top of things like news articles, journal skins, and print promotional pieces, I also came up with this idea of the Stamp as a pseudo bumper sticker to put on your journal or in comments, to indicate something like “I’m heading to the DeviantArt Summit.”

The reason for the stamp was due to its relationship with the original place the Summit was to be held: an airplane hanger in LA. Angelo (the CEO) had this vision of a very specific hanger to be utilized, where all the booths and stations would go, etc. It seemed like a sure thing. So we designed our promotional package around the idea of airplanes, and so the stamp was an “air mail” reference. Obviously, as history shows, the airplane hanger idea fell through and the event was migrated to the Hollywood Palladium.

Here are a couple links to Summit info:

• Original blog post by Angelo (spyed): https://www.deviantart.com/spyed/journal/The-2005-deviantART-Summit-214145117
• A video recorded by Scott (Jark):

The stamp was originally shared out, not by me, but I believe by an official account (maybe it was the deviantart account, maybe it was the temporary summit account). This is why it’s not attached to my profile.

It grew in prominence and popularity because it was so much like a bumper-sticker, so it was quickly co-opted for other purposes as a way of advertising one’s opinion about a topic, and it was frequently attached to comment signatures and journals to keep the user’s message alive.

Hope that helps!


-
Ryan Ford"


Given that the original DeviantArt stamp is now unavailable (according to my own searching), it seems as if the original DeviantART stamp was attached to the temporary summit account, and I was not able to find a repost. Which means we have a piece of DeviantART stamp LOST MEDIA on our hands! Someone get the Lost Media Wiki involved!! (halfjoke)

xD that is amazing, just the perfect research to dedicate a webpage about.

I'm currently writing a (very small) article about this, since there's no other write-ups on the topic that I can find. I'll edit this post with the article link once it has been completed!

Edit: Here it is! The end also contains a call to action, and an email to contact if you have any more info on the topic :]

[larvapuppy]

Thank you so much for reaching out to him & sharing his reply with us! This is important internet culture history.

Given that the original DeviantArt stamp is now unavailable (according to my own searching), it seems as if the original DeviantART stamp was attached to the temporary summit account, and I was not able to find a repost.

I wonder if the Summit account at the time was archived? Someone would have to figure out its username to determine the URL, but it might be worth a look on the Wayback machine or other webpage archives.

[ValyceNegative]

Folks we are on the hunt for the RAREST DEVIANTART STAMP IN HISTORY

Seriously though, what a nice origin! Perfectly explains why exactly the stamp design was used. I would have never ever guessed it was because of convention theming!

I remember DA meets getting advertised on bigger accounts when I was just starting browsing the community in those years, but I would have never guessed them to be such big events. 200 artist booths .o.

[Corrupted Unicorn]

Damn (sorry grandma), I didn't expect this topic to spurn such an interesting search with such a mind-clearing response! Glad Ryan took the time to answer, and I'm glad he shares similar feelings with how most people feel about Deviantart nowadays.

@Bede I'm glad you wrote an article on your website about this! This info surely deserves to live on somewhere other than a forum post. Not to diss on forums, but sometimes clue information gets lost in a myriad of posts there. I've seen it with my two own eyes.

[villain]

Awesome detective work @Bede! As others have said, I'm glad you've posted this up to your site - its a really interesting topic, so I can share this around some friends more easily by linking there than a forum thread. I spent a LOT of time on dA but never knew about its origins either. Its amazing a silly promotional idea like that that was specifically geared towards one specific event (not even a yearly con!) ended up practically outliving dA itself.

...and I think its incredibly brave to have a projector hooked up to recent uploads on dA back then. What an easily trollable setup 

[Capybara]

Despite being around back then, revisiting or collecting DeviantART stamps is something I currently have no interest in doing because... Uh... I was "in" that community in the late 00s-early 10s, and it was kind of toxic as fuck! Most stamps are shitpost-y or just displaying people's interests, but I unironically believe that the "DeviantART stamp section" was the prototype to Tumblr discourse. People liked using stamps as sort of starting point for a lot of dumb political discourse and trolling, to the point if you made a hot button topic stamp it would overshadow the rest of your work. So the equivalent to a "discourse side blog" were just accounts dedicated to stamps.

In hindsight, I think that's why stamps got popular. They were easy to make, there were tons of free templates so that literally anyone could make one. You just download the file and type into the stamp or shrink an image to fit the borders. Whether you were making a fan button for a TV show or taking the piss by posting a hot take, they attracted positive and negative attention. When I was 16 or 17 I made a stamp saying I don't think a popular Youtuber was funny because I was in a bad mood, and it was most commented on and favorited deviation. So I just made more for awhile. The arguments in the comments were amusing, and people seemed to like looking at those more than actual artwork, which was why I ended up swearing off on making or even collecting them when I remade accounts.

*I checked my storage and noticed I kept two stamps related to media, one I made in 2009 and the other in 2011.