Anne Liles Travel × Leatherius Woodman – a leather stamping study
From the Practice Log – an ongoing series of stamping studies on real-world marks.
A July study.
Anne Liles Travel has planned journeys since Anne founded the agency in 2017, out of Mountain Brook, Alabama by our notes, with an approach the agency calls thoughtful and design-forward. The family story is what made us reach for the tooling. Anne was raised in a family of adventurers, and the official telling credits her grandmother Dee, now ninety-nine, with shaping the curiosity and the intention Anne brings to a trip. The agency’s own line holds that “the best journeys start long before takeoff.” A craft with a ninety-nine-year-old teacher behind it has our respect before we ink a single proof.
The wordmark earned the study on its own. Wide serif capitals sit far apart in a deep botanical green, and spacing that generous is a kindness to a stamping die, since every stroke keeps its edge when the brass goes in. Our one hesitation was the small TRAVEL line beneath the name, which holds up at tag scale but sits near the limit of what a die can carry.
The mark, as found
Pressed lengthwise
A luggage tag runs long and so does this name, so we pressed the mark lengthwise. Deep forest green answers the wordmark’s own ink, and pale gray-sand takes after the cream fields of the agency’s pages. Black carries the gold foil, our standing third.
Long Before Takeoff
The companion design takes the agency’s phrase literally. A chunky dashed route leaves a small house at its front door and spends most of its length on the ground, running flat for two thirds of the width before it crosses a short runway bar and finally curves up to a little plane, nose high, two dashes still trailing from its tail. The longest stretch of the journey happens at home, which is the whole argument of the phrase. We tried a version with a suitcase by the door and cut it; the drawing said more with less on it, though we may yet miss that suitcase.
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 Anne Liles Travel and you'd like these made real, or anything here changed – say hello through our contact page.