Bucks County Economic Development Corporation × Leatherius Woodman – a leather stamping study
From the Practice Log – an ongoing series of stamping studies on real-world marks.
An August study.
Bucks County Economic Development Corporation has kept the same patient job since 1958: when a company wants to grow in Bucks County, or relocate there, BCEDC is, by its own description, the best contact to know. The homepage folds the whole philosophy into four words, "Build it in Bucks," and the history page is plainer still, calling the work "Retaining and Creating Jobs."
We fell for the particulars. This is the outfit that helped turn the New Hope–Ivyland Railroad around and helped the former naval air base at Warminster find a second working life. From $100,000 in seed money, the record ran to $5.804 billion in capital investment and 78,973 jobs created or retained between 1958 and 2017. Numbers that size are earned in small rooms, over loan papers and site maps, one opened door at a time.
The mark, as found
A royal blue seal anchors the left of the lockup, the pale silhouette of Bucks County under white BCEDC lettering, with 1958 tucked at its foot. Past a thin divider the full name stands in four stacked gray lines. It is a wide, deliberate mark, like a letterhead that has signed a great many loan agreements.
Pressed
A mark this wide wants to run the length of a luggage tag, so that is how we pressed it. Blueberry gives the seal's royal blue a natural home in leather, a deep true navy, and country-gray picks up the warm mid-gray of the stacked wordmark. A third tag in gray-sand, a pale warm greige, stands in for the quiet county silhouette behind the letters. Each takes a blind deboss, tone on tone, the way a civic seal should sit.
An open door
Every project BCEDC shepherds follows one arc: it begins as dashed lines on a survey and ends as a door people walk through on their way to work. We drew that arc as a single image. Inside a round border reading "BUILD IT IN BUCKS" above and "SINCE 1958" below, one doorway stands half drawn and half built; the left jamb is still dashed blueprint line while the right stands solid, and the door between them already hangs open.
On the toiletry kits the roundel sits low in the right corner at maker's-mark scale, pressed into a navy bag stacked over a deep brown one.
On the desk
The catchall tray comes in golden tan and earns its place here honestly. It is where keys land at the end of the day, and a fair summary of BCEDC's calling is getting keys into the right hands. The roundel presses into the center of the base, framed by the stitched border.
For the long projects
Financing packages and site searches run in months and years, and they generate notes. A wrap journal in navy and a companion in warm mid-gray carry the roundel generously in the lower right corner, where a thumb rests when the cover is closed. We will admit these became our favorite pieces in the study, though the tray argued its case all afternoon.
The key
When a project finally becomes real, somebody hands over a key. So we cut one. Its teeth are a miniature roofline, a gabled workshop rising into a taller mill with its stack. The bow stays a plain open ring, so the whole thing reads as a key first and a county second. On the fobs it presses below the rivet, one in navy and one in pale sea-blue, the brighter blue their own website saves for its buttons.
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 Bucks County Economic Development Corporation and you'd like these made real, or anything here changed – say hello through our contact page.