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On Halloween, rather than concentrating on pumpkins, goblins and witches, Keith Martin was thinking of his facial hair and how exactly he would trim his moustache for Nov. 1.
His obsession is not nearly as self-serving as you might think. Martin has grown a full beard to honour Movember (a term that combines Mo from moustache with November), an international do-good movement that challenges men to grow a moustache in November to raise awareness and funds for prostate cancer.
"It's a guy thing," says Martin, 54, a Vancouver stamp designer and collector. "Tomorrow I'll have to make a commitment as to the shape of my moustache."
The moustache comes up out of a conversation about a logo Martin uses to sign his emails. The logo includes eyeglasses, a nose and facial hair. The logos change according to the type of facial hair Martin sports.
Like his altered states of facial hair, Martin's career as a graphic designer has spanned different areas. In his early days, Martin enjoyed a period of self-employment along with teaching, which he still does today at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. About two years ago, he gave up his business to take a part-time position with a Vancouver design firm. In addition, he also freelances with Canada Post as a stamp designer, his biggest love.
"They are my dream projects," says Martin. "They're a culmination of my many loves: my collecting, Canadian stamps, my nature as an artist and my career as a graphic designer."
Martin got started designing stamps in 1996, when a design colleague he now works for called him up to ask if he'd consider designing a stamp. His friend had no idea that Martin was a Canadian stamp enthusiast, having collected and built upon his grandfather's stamp collection, which dates back to the late 1800s.
"After I picked the phone up off the floor, I said, yes, of course," he recalls. "I wasn't told what it would be É and I was all excited. It's usually dead guys and bridges and things of stature. I was excited about what important thing of Canada I was going to do."
When he learned it would be creating bees, he admits to feeling slightly underwhelmed and having to initially fake his excitement for the project. But that didn't last for long. Over the course of his research, Martin grew to love the much maligned creatures thanks in part to the bee god of Canada who aided in his research.
"I came home from that meeting completely stoked and buzzing, to not avoid the pun. All these designs literally poured out of me. And then the stamp got cancelled."
Besides becoming something of a bee expert, who would annoyingly correct family members at outdoor get-togethers (no that's not a wasp, that's a ...), Martin thought his stamp design career was over. But a year later he got another call and since then he hasn't looked back.
Martin has designed six sets and 22 different stamps for Canada Post, becoming something of a nature artist for the Crown corporation. He's done whales, big cats, nebulae and beneficial insects, which allowed him to try his hand at bees again. Through his part-time work at a design firm, he's also designed stamps and worked on some Vancouver Olympic stamps.
"I've been typecast," he jokes. "I love doing nature. As an artist my current muse is landscape."
When I refer to him as the Robert Bateman of stamps, he tells me that he actually beat out Canada's best-known nature artists when competing on the big cat issue. "As soon as I found that out, I called my mom and said, 'Guess what mom?' "
A collector by nature, Martin began collecting stamps at eight thanks to his grandfather, Bill Martin, a naval engineer who immigrated to Canada from Scotland. Martin would eventually inherit his grandfather's collection, which now includes every Canadian stamp issued since his grandfather's year of birth, 1893. Right now, he's working on mounting and archiving the collection and removing all those little glue hinges.
"For me, it's a personal connection to my grandfather and I'm maintaining that legacy," says Martin. "As a designer, I'm interested in the story Canadian stamps tell. I have containers and three or four bins with all the stamps and paraphernalia. It's fussy and tedious, a labour of love, right?"
"The new stuff I collect is waiting to go into books. I'll get to completing that when I'm retired and have time. It's not a volume thing for me; it's that it's all-inclusive and complete."
When Martin's not cataloguing and collecting stamps, he has plenty of other interests, he enjoys devoting his time to. The self-described packrat collects tin toys, retro clocks, books, hats, maps and all things yellow.
He'd collect much more, but has space limitations given the 650-square-foot, century-old cabin he, his artist wife jil p. weaving, and their 22-year-old son share. Martin jokes that his son's rebellion against having artists for parents meant embracing the business world with a view to working in real estate development.
"He wears suits, unlike his father," says Martin. "I own one suit, He owns three."
And though his son plans to make his first million before having children of his own, Martin likes the notion of passing on his stamp collection one day perhaps to a grandchild, as his grandfather did with him.
"It warms my heart, the idea of that kind of a nice spiral that carries on."
November 23 to December 6, 2010 issue of Canadian Coin News
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