101 Vacations × Leatherius Woodman – a leather stamping study
From the Practice Log – an ongoing series of stamping studies on real-world marks.
A July study.
101 Vacations is a full-service travel planner founded and run by Wendy Hershey out of Cornelius, North Carolina. Her own specialties sit at the luxury and entertainment end of the trade, where a named division, Luxe Destinations, handles the highest-touch itineraries. The wider house plans everything from a honeymoon to a school trip, and the group side reaches events as large as Wimbledon. Through all of it runs one promise, stated plainly on the site: support “from start to return.”
The wordmark is what asked for the study. Serif capitals of high contrast, tracked wide and set white on deep navy; beneath them, TRAVEL AGENCY in small spaced caps between two short warm-beige rules. Wide tracking is generous to a die, since every letter gets air to press into, though hairline serifs keep a maker honest. And the name reads as a first-principles cue we take a little personally: 101 is the number of the introductory course, and a luggage tag is about the first object a trip acquires.
The mark, as found
Pressed lengthwise
The lockup runs long, so it runs the length of the tag. Blueberry was the easy call, a near match for the navy their lettering lives on, with gray-sand answering the pale grounds of the site. Gold goes on black. We went back and forth on the short beige rules beside TRAVEL AGENCY, which nearly vanish at tag scale; we kept them, because the lockup feels bare without its shelf.
From start to return
“From start to return” nearly drew the companion for us. One map pin, and a dashed route that leaves it and comes home to it, passing a small sun and a plane in flight along the way, with FROM START TO RETURN lettered around the circuit. Travel marks usually celebrate the leaving. We wanted the whole loop on record, since the return leg is where a planner earns their keep.
We made this out of love. Leatherius Woodman is on a mission to create and share artifacts of beauty, craft and love – this study is one of them, and we hope the feeling is mutual. Every image is a render – how we prototype before cutting a die.
If you're 101 Vacations and you'd like these made real, or anything here changed – say hello through our contact page.