Bell Adams Travel × Leatherius Woodman – a leather stamping study
From the Practice Log – an ongoing series of stamping studies on real-world marks.
A July study.
Bell Adams Travel is Katie Bellino Adams's full-service luxury agency in Charlotte, North Carolina, building bespoke itineraries across the seven continents. Their method is the old and honest one: the team goes first, sleeping in the hotels and walking with the guides before a client's name touches an itinerary. Katie's own range runs from a weekend of wine tasting in Napa to gorilla trekking in Rwanda, which tells you how far the word “travel” stretches in that office. The line over the door is “Travel That Transforms”, and it earned its way onto our bench.
The mark asked politely. BELL ADAMS runs in widely spaced geometric capitals, near-black with the faintest green cast, lettering that already behaves like a die. Generous letterspacing is a gift to a stamper, since each capital gets its own pool of leather to sink into. We did leave off the thin lowercase tagline that rides under the wordmark; type that fine closes up under a press, and we would rather lose a line than blur it. The interlocked BA monogram came along instead, and the two sit together on the tag the way a signature sits over a printed name.
The mark, as found
Pressed lengthwise
We pressed the monogram and wordmark on a pale sea-blue that borrows from the coastal photography all over their site and a gray sand that matches its quiet stone neutrals. Black carries the gold foil.
Travel that transforms
Their tagline handed us the drawing. A suitcase stands open, and its raised lids become butterfly wings, with TRAVEL THAT TRANSFORMS set beneath. Metamorphosis is the oldest figure we have for a journey that changes the traveler; our part was noticing that luggage already carries the silhouette. Whether Katie's clients come home from Rwanda changed is her department, and by her account they do.
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 Bell Adams Travel and you'd like these made real, or anything here changed – say hello through our contact page.