Carmel Travel Company × Leatherius Woodman – a leather stamping study
From the Practice Log – an ongoing series of stamping studies on real-world marks.
A July study.
Carmel Travel Company is Melisa Keiser's travel practice in Carmel, Indiana – the Carmel north of Indianapolis, a comfortable distance from either coast. She designs custom European journeys and luxury cruises, and she plans for whole families at once, the kind of multigenerational trip where one schedule has to hold for a grandmother and a nine-year-old on the same afternoon. Her site keeps circling a single idea. Thoughtful pacing. Every detail considered. When Italy comes up, the promise is a “well-paced Italy,” while most of the trade sells the stuffed-to-bursting version. Melisa's leaves room to sit down, which is rarer and harder to deliver.
The wordmark made its own case for a study. Pale blue capitals in a clean geometric sans, CARMEL TRAVEL sitting over a smaller COMPANY whose letters are spaced generously wide. That second line is pacing you can see; the word takes its time crossing the page. We wanted to know whether a press into leather would keep that interval or swallow it.
The mark, as found
Pressed lengthwise
The lockup runs wider than it is tall, so it lies along the length of the tag. Turquoise is the closest leather on our shelf to that pale sea-blue, and Blueberry carries the same family down into a deeper travel navy. Black takes the gold.
At your pace
The companion design takes her promise literally. Three stops arc over a bench, and the route reads AT YOUR PACE – deliberate breathing room drawn between the stops, with a seat in the middle of it. We went back and forth on that bench. A landmark would read more easily at stamp size, but the bench is the whole argument, since the trips Melisa designs include the sitting down. If the slats prove too fine for a die, they can thicken a little and lose nothing.
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 Carmel Travel Company and you'd like these made real, or anything here changed – say hello through our contact page.