Alaska's Cruise & Travel Experts × Leatherius Woodman – a leather stamping study
From the Practice Log – an ongoing series of stamping studies on real-world marks.
A July study.
Alaska's Cruise & Travel Experts works out of Anchorage under a motto the business can actually prove. Lisa Small came north in 1983 and opened the agency in 1995; the biography she keeps now counts more than 25 cruises and every one of the fifty states, with Tahiti named as her favorite. The house line is “We Know Because We Go.” Three decades of sailings sit behind it. The desk leads with Alaska cruises and tours and reaches well beyond them, to river sailings and luxury lines.
The mark is what asked for the study. A navy half-globe ruled with latitude and longitude rides two curling turquoise waves, and the wordmark beside it runs long and low: a large serif Cruise & Travel with EXPERTS letterspaced beneath. An italic Alaska closes the line at the far right. A navigator's instrument drawn small enough to press – we could hardly leave it alone.
The mark, as found
Pressed lengthwise
We pressed it lengthwise, globe and waves leading into that trailing italic Alaska, and kept the logo's internal order exactly as found. Turquoise leather follows the wave forms and blueberry follows the navy of the globe and lettering, a pair of cold-water hides. Black carries the gold foil.
“We Know Because We Go.”
For the companion we set a small liner on open water and let its two-line wake carry the words. We stamped the tagline straight first and it sat on the leather like a slogan; cut into the wake it reads as evidence, since a ship earns a wake only by going. Whether the conceit survives at luggage-tag scale is a question we hand to the render below.
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 Alaska's Cruise & Travel Experts and you'd like these made real, or anything here changed – say hello through our contact page.