Aquila Travel × Leatherius Woodman – a leather stamping study
From the Practice Log – an ongoing series of stamping studies on real-world marks.
A July study.
Aquila Travel plans journeys out of Albuquerque, New Mexico, under a promise set right into its logo: “A World of Great Escapes.” The homepage greets you in the same key – “Escape, explore, experience – whatever your destination, we are your guides.” Aquila is the Latin word for eagle, and the name of the constellation that carries Altair; to our eye the cyan device beside the wordmark reads as a wing mid-beat, or a sail full of wind, and either way it is a shape built for going somewhere. The agency arranges destination weddings and leisure escapes, and it also routes film and production crews around the world, a rarer trade that we kept for the second design.
The lockup splits its serifs by color, AQUILA in bright cyan and TRAVEL in near-black, and high-contrast letterforms like these are exactly what a brass die loves. We did wonder about the hairlines at tag scale. The wing's two lower swooshes taper almost to nothing, and a deboss can lose a taper like that; the renders below suggest the mark holds, though the first real pressing will settle it.
The mark, as found
Pressed lengthwise
Turquoise takes the cyan of the wing at face value, and blueberry answers the dark TRAVEL word while giving that pale blue a deeper companion. Black carries the lockup in gold foil.
Great escapes, take one
Aquila moves film and production crews for a living, so the companion borrows the oldest prop on any set. An open clapperboard, its slate lettered A WORLD OF GREAT ESCAPES, waits lengthwise on the leather for someone to call the roll.
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 Aquila Travel and you'd like these made real, or anything here changed – say hello through our contact page.