Allied Travel × Leatherius Woodman – a leather stamping study
From the Practice Log – an ongoing series of stamping studies on real-world marks.
A July study.
Allied Travel has been sending the Des Moines area out into the world since 1980, a full-service agency in the MAST Travel Network that books everything from honeymoons to Alaska cruises under one long-running promise: “All You Have To Do Is Pack Your Bags.” Everyone there navigates by title. Dean Burtch, owner for thirty-eight years, is the Navigator In Chief, and his standing advice runs deeper than the slogan. Unexpected challenges, he tells his travelers, usually become the memories most cherished and most talked about. A slogan is easy; forty-six years of answering the phone when a connection misses is the hard part, and it is why we picked this mark up.
The logo we found was tiny, a hundred and eleven pixels wide, and it still read cleanly at that size, which says something about its bones. Allied sits over Travel in a heavy gray slab serif, the two lines nearly matched in width, and a small turquoise suitcase stands upright at the corner as if set down by the door. We redrew it faithfully at pressing resolution; the redraw is this study's only liberty, and a small one.
The mark, as found
Pressed
A pale sea-blue keeps faith with the little suitcase, and a country gray comes straight off the slab wordmark. Black carries the gold.
Pack your bags
For the companion we let the slogan do the acting. The suitcase stands upright with its lid cracked open and a shirt sleeve making its escape over the edge, ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS lettered above and PACK YOUR BAGS below. We hesitated over whether a runaway sleeve was too playful for a firm that has kept the same promise since 1980, then decided the promise had earned the joke; anyone who has ever sat on a suitcase to close it will know the sleeve.
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 Allied Travel and you'd like these made real, or anything here changed – say hello through our contact page.