Clearsulting × Leatherius Woodman – a leather stamping study
From the Practice Log – an ongoing series of stamping studies on real-world marks.
An August study.
Clearsulting works on the machinery of finance, the closes and reconciliations that most people never see and every company depends on. They started in Cleveland in 2015, and their line is “Go further with Clearsulting.” What won us over is the culture underneath it. They talk about running into the storm and doing the hard things first, and their teams stay side by side with clients long after a system goes live.
They name five core values, and one of the five is simply joy. That detail stayed with us the whole time we worked.
The mark, as found
A rounded lowercase wordmark in deep indigo, led by an open ring drawn in indigo and two warm oranges. The whole mark runs wide, close to three times as long as it is tall.
Pressed
A wordmark this wide wants the long axis of a luggage tag, so that is how we ran it. Navy blueberry and golden arizona carry the two temperatures of the mark, its indigo and its orange. A black tag completes the family and takes the gold pass, the one finish we reserve for black leather.
The line that goes further
Their ring has an opening, and we kept returning to it. Work like theirs begins inside a tangle, a close that will not reconcile or a process nobody fully owns. So we drew one continuous line that enters as exactly that tangle and leaves through the ring’s opening as a single clean rising stroke. GO FURTHER sits beneath. The knot is the honest part of the drawing; the exit is the job.
Centered on the golden tan tray, at the size a desk object can afford. Somewhere for the keys and the storm both.
On keychains it becomes the smallest daily version of the same promise, pressed blind on navy blueberry and golden arizona.
And on the wrap journals it sits in the lower corner where a maker signs, on navy blueberry and a warm honeyed russet. A journal felt right for people who write their way through other companies’ systems.
Five strands, one course
Clearsulting holds five stated values, and a list of them on leather would read like a plaque. We drew what the values do. Five thin strands enter at different heights and find each other in pairs, until one bold line runs off the right edge, gaining a little altitude as it goes. FURTHER TOGETHER is set beneath the merge. We tried versions with the strands labeled, and every one read like an org chart, so the lines stay quiet.
It lives in the lower corner of the toiletry bags, a maker’s mark on a navy blueberry bag over deep brown dark espresso. Pressed blind; the toiletry bags carry no foil at all.
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 Clearsulting and you'd like these made real, or anything here changed – say hello through our contact page.