The design refers solely to the overall graphic appearance of a stamp. Allowed variations among several stamps of the same design are only the denomination, other inscriptions including issuer name, function, and imprint, and any variants.

The design description is a shorthand for the graphical appearance that identifies it unambiguously. The software will accept any phrase, but it works best to use brief but suggestive descriptions. For instance, "Queen Victoria 1840" is a good description for the design shared by the Penny Black, Twopenny Blue, Penny Red, etc. Although seemingly too brief, "Stanton" is sufficient to describe the design shared by all the US stamps of the 1870s depicting secretary of state Edwin Stanton.

It is acceptable to use generic terms, such as "numeral", although less useful since there are a great many different designs based on a numeral. Oftentimes these can be made more specific by describing additional graphical elements, for descriptions like "numeral in oval", or "slanted numeral".

The short description of a design is shared across the entire database, since it possible for stamps of different countries to have the same design (think of joint issues). If there are multiple designs with the same general description, distinguish them with a parenthesized suffix, as in "Queen Victoria (1879)" or "horses (1961 Sweden)".

(In the Scott catalogue, designs are described with "A" prefixes, as in "A58", while Michel uses lower-case letter combinations, as in "bn.")

Properties