Gruv Gear × Leatherius Woodman – a leather stamping study
From the Practice Log – an ongoing series of stamping studies on real-world marks.
An August study.
Gruv Gear began as what the company still calls “a personal project.” Founder Jay Baldemor was a gigging bassist with a heavy rig and no cart strong enough yet small enough to move it, so he set out to build one. He worked after hours with an industrial designer and an engineer friend, and after about two years of prototypes the first V-Cart Solo rolled onto the floor of the 2010 NAMM Show, where it drew distribution offers from around the world. The company still calls that first cart a “transformer.”
These days their gear follows working musicians and other mobile creators through a global network of warehouses and dealers. Nearly everything in the catalog lives in that same handoff between moving and making, and that is the thread we followed here.
The mark, as found
A compact stacked lockup: an angular outline climbs on a sharp diagonal while a white notch cuts a check into its body, and a lowercase “gruvgear” sits beneath. The official asset is drawn pale, made to glow against the dark of their own storefront.
Pressed
The lockup is compact, so it stands upright on the tag face. We pressed honeyed russet for the burnt orange that warms their storefront, and pale gray sand for the soft gray the mark is drawn in. The black tag takes the gold, the same trick the pale logo plays against their dark header.
First in, last out
Load-in has a creed, and everyone who has pushed a case up a ramp knows it. The badge draws Gruv Gear's origin as a night of work. A two-wheeled cart rolls its strapped load up a road that folds twice on the way to a lit stage door, with FIRST IN around the top of the ring and LAST OUT around the bottom.
On keychains it rides where the van keys live, blind debossed on navy and on golden tan.
And the golden tan catchall tray is where the night ends, the place the pockets empty once the truck is finally shut. The badge sits pressed at the center of the base, waiting under whatever lands on it.
Only the notes
Their best-known product, the FretWrap, is a soft band that mutes the strings a player never meant to sound. We took that promise literally. Five strings buzz above the wrap and run clean below it, down to a bridge bar with ONLY THE NOTES set beneath.
On the toiletry bags the stamp sits small in the lower right corner, a maker's mark pressed into honeyed russet over a deep espresso base, their warm accent riding on its dark ground.
The journals get the pun. Written notes deserve the same courtesy as played ones, so the design lands generously in the lower right corner, on black and on pale gray sand. On black the unfoiled press reads as a quiet shadow relief, which suits a design about quiet. Whether anyone at Gruv Gear still keeps a paper notebook, we honestly don't know; the black one is ours to keep either way.
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 Gruv Gear and you'd like these made real, or anything here changed – say hello through our contact page.