Diane’s Travel Agency × Leatherius Woodman – a leather stamping study
From the Practice Log – an ongoing series of stamping studies on real-world marks.
A July study.
Diane’s Travel Agency works out of 197 Main Street in Waterville, Maine, a storefront Diane Roderigue opened in September 2013. Her career began long before the storefront did. She writes that she started in 1975, before the internet, when tickets were handwritten and fares were found in printed tariffs. The agency is affiliated with Travel Planners International and holds ASTA membership, and the invitation on the site reads, “Call now to experience the difference of working with Diane.”
The lettering is what drew us in. The name runs as one continuous italic script, black for Diane’s and bright teal for Travel Agency, led off by a solid black plane silhouette pointing the way. It behaves like a signature. A hand this loopy is honest work for a stamping die; the capitals swing wide and the hairlines thin where a pen would lift, and we wanted to see whether leather would hold all of it.
The mark, as found
Pressed lengthwise
The lockup runs lengthwise, plane first. Pale sea-blue follows the teal of the script and pale gray-sand gives the two-tone lettering a quiet ground. Black takes the same press in gold foil, which is where those looping capitals earn their keep.
Since 1975
The companion piece is a handwritten airline ticket, the kind Diane filled out when she started, reading SINCE 1975 with a fountain-pen nib still touching the line. We first drew the pen lifted clear of the paper, and the ticket read as a finished document; setting the nib back on the line put the writing in motion again, which is where Diane's career still is. Also lengthwise.
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 Diane’s Travel Agency and you'd like these made real, or anything here changed – say hello through our contact page.