Forgotten Dreams Vacations × Leatherius Woodman – a leather stamping study

From the Practice Log – an ongoing series of stamping studies on real-world marks.

A July study.

Forgotten Dreams Vacations is a travel agency the trade directories place in Cross Lanes, West Virginia. Its own homepage is quieter than any directory: just the name, set in a stately serif over one photograph of a packed beach, a suitcase and a sunhat waiting by pale green water. We kept returning to the name. “Forgotten” admits a loss, the trip mislaid somewhere between the mortgage and the school run. “Dreams” refuses to leave it there. Two words carrying a confession and a promise, with a third to name the errand. That economy earned the study.

Their visual estate begins and ends with that homepage. So the first pressing takes the name exactly as the site gives it, letterspaced capitals run lengthwise along the tag. Good words, we found, carry a fair distance unaided.

As found

Forgotten Dreams Vacations name pressed in plain type on three leather luggage tags

The mark this study proposes

Our proposal reaches for the oldest memory device people carry, the knot tied in a handkerchief so a thing will be remembered, and ties it into the handle of a small suitcase. Beneath the case sit the words FORGOTTEN DREAMS VACATIONS in the same patient capitals. Together they say what the name says: the dream was set down somewhere, and here is the string around your finger. A knot and a case, both plainly the agency's own, keep the drawing well clear of anyone else's trademarks.

Proposed reminder-knot suitcase mark for Forgotten Dreams Vacations

Pressed

Pale sea-blue follows the water in the agency's photograph, and warm caramel follows the suitcase and sunhat beside it. Black carries the gold foil. Up close the knot's rope-work asked more depth than our first drawing gave it; we thickened the strands twice before the impression read cleanly.

Proposed Forgotten Dreams Vacations mark on three leather luggage tags

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 Forgotten Dreams Vacations and you'd like these made real, or anything here changed – say hello through our contact page.