Emirates Post Brand Guidelines: Dubai’s 1909 Post Office, a 2001 Law & the 7X Group

An Indian post office on the Gulf.

Emirates Post is the official postal operator of the United Arab Emirates and a subsidiary of the Emirates Post Group, English Wikipedia says. Its story begins in Dubai on 19 August 1909, when the first post office in the region opened. That office was Indian in origin, part of the Sind postal circle, according to English Wikipedia’s survey of the UAE’s postal history, and it was managed by the Indian postal service until 1947. Until then letters from Dubai carried Indian stamps, which collectors recognise by the cancellation “Dubai Persian Gulf,” and Pakistani stamps were used until 31 March 1948.

After the partition of India, Britain, which then handled the Trucial States’ external relations, ran the posts through British Postal Agencies, a subsidiary of the General Post Office, from 1948. The agencies sold British stamps overprinted with values in rupees, and by January 1961 stamps inscribed “Trucial States” were on sale in Dubai. In Abu Dhabi an agency opened on Das Island in December 1960 and in Abu Dhabi city in March 1963. Each emirate then took over its own posts: Dubai on 14 June 1963 and Abu Dhabi on 29 March 1964. Several of the northern emirates, including Ajman, Umm Al Quwain and Sharjah, went on to issue many stamps aimed mainly at collectors, English Wikipedia says.

A national service followed the formation of the UAE. In 1972, English and Arabic Wikipedia say, a General Directorate of Postal Services was set up under the Ministry of Communications. The UAE issued its first federal stamps on 1 January 1973, and Arabic Wikipedia says the country joined the Universal Postal Union the same year.

From directorate to group.

The present structure was built in stages, which Arabic Wikipedia sets out. A General Postal Authority followed in 1985, and in 2001 a federal law established the Emirates Post corporation. In 2007 a holding company, Emirates Post Group, was formed with Emirates Post as one of its subsidiaries. Federal Law No. 3 of 2013 then created Emirates Post Group as a public corporation with its own budget, bringing Emirates Post and the express service Empost together as two operating units. Federal Law No. 21 of 2019 turned the group into a public joint-stock company wholly owned by the Emirates Investment Authority, the article says, with the group continuing to oversee its subsidiaries.

The group reaches beyond letters. Arabic Wikipedia lists among its subsidiaries Wall Street Exchange, a money-exchange business founded in Dubai in 1982, and an electronic documents centre set up with a private partner to print and process bills, statements and other regular mailings. Through its post offices the group offers domestic and international express and parcel services, money transfers, bill payments and government services, the same article says. It also notes that the UAE hosted the Universal Postal Union’s strategy conference in Dubai in 2006 and was elected to the union’s Postal Operations Council in 2012.

Stamps remain a visible part of the work. In January 2014 Khaleej Times reported a set of Emirates Post stamps showing the tools used to make Arabic coffee, from the dallah pot to the fenjan cup, each with its Arabic name, on sale at the main post offices. In 2025 Emirates Post issued a commemorative collection for the 80th anniversary of the League of Arab States, developed with the League’s General Secretariat and drawing on the League’s visual identity, according to a release carried by MENAFN.

Postal operators and their signs.

Postal operators are among the oldest names a country carries. Many began as royal or state services centuries ago and became companies only in recent decades, and their identities often hold on to symbols from that past while the business shifts from letters to parcels. Colour does much of the work: red, yellow, blue and orange wordmarks appear on post boxes, vans, uniforms and counters, and a colour can outlast the institution that first chose it. Denmark’s postal service wore red and yellow even before it was nationalised in 1711, and Sweden’s has used a post horn with a crown since its foundation in 1636, according to English Wikipedia.

The symbols repeat across borders. Post horns appear in several European marks; envelopes, birds in flight and arrows suggest movement elsewhere. Names matter too. Many operators use the national name in the local language, or in two or three languages at once, and some now trade under a group name that sits above the post office itself.

Their public faces have changed with the work. Websites now lead with parcels, tracking and delivery options, then letters and stamps and, for some operators, payments, money transfers or banking. Parcel lockers, service points inside shops, delivery vans and counter photography have become as common in their imagery as the post box. Stamp issues remain a design programme of their own, with commemorative sets and products for collectors, and philately keeps older issues in view.

Most of these operators are state-owned, or were until recently, so laws, annual reports and press releases are the main record of their ownership and structure. This guide sets out what those records and independent press say about each operator’s history, ownership and visual habits, and marks the companies’ own claims as theirs.

Seven emirates, seven continents, seven seas.

In January 2024 the parent company took a new name. At an event at Madinat Jumeirah in Dubai, Emirates Post Group unveiled the identity 7X, according to the group’s release carried by MENAFN on 1 February 2024. The group said the name stands for the seven emirates connected to the seven continents and across the seven seas, and that 7X would hold entities including Emirates Post, the fintech business FINTX and EDC. It tied the identity to a five-year strategy built on three pillars it called Protect, Transform and Expand, and said it would combine courier, express and parcel services with financial technology. Arabic Wikipedia describes the 7X name in the same terms.

The result is a two-level name: 7X for the group and Emirates Post for the national postal operator under it, with the Arabic name بريد الإمارات, which means the same, alongside the English. English Wikipedia still describes Emirates Post as the UAE’s official postal operator within the group. Arabic Wikipedia adds that the company announced a plan to grow its network of service points for sending and collecting parcels to 1,000 during 2024.

For a design guide, Emirates Post shows how a postal brand can sit inside a newer group identity while keeping a bilingual national name and a steady run of commemorative stamps. Compare Swiss Post and SingPost. For this guide we use a desert sand, a deep red and a palm green with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Emirates Post’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.