Investia Edmonton × Leatherius Woodman – a leather stamping study
From the Practice Log – an ongoing series of stamping studies on real-world marks.
A August study.
Investia Edmonton is an advisory branch operating through Investia Financial Services Inc., part of iA Financial Group, and it serves families and businesses in the Edmonton area under a promise we admire for its plainness: "We'll work hard to earn your trust." Warren McGinnis, the Branch Manager, has worked in the financial industry since 1991, and he describes his role as supporting the branch's advisors while industry rules and regulations keep shifting. That is a steady kind of ambition, and it earned their mark a quiet study on our bench.
The mark, as found
The lockup rewards a close look. A blue lowercase i and capital A form the corporate device, the A holding a white triangular counter, and a gray elephant folds into its right edge with a negative-space ear and a squared trunk. Investia sits beside the device with Financial Services Inc. beneath, all in the same deep blue – #003DA5, with the elephant's #7C878E gray as a second voice. The mark runs long, roughly 4.6 to 1, which makes it native to the lengthwise face of a luggage tag with the strap at left. Blueberry and country-gray carry it as a blind-deboss pair; blueberry is the nearest hide we stock to their blue, and country-gray answers the elephant. Black takes the same lockup in antique-gold foil, the formal member of the family. This is their existing mark, stamped faithfully – the two dies further down are our own proposals.
The Fine Print
Warren's public biography says the branch's advisors hold well over 100 years of combined experience. Plenty of firms would blur a figure like that into grandeur; the branch states it precisely, and we wanted a die that keeps the precision. Ours sets a large 100 wearing a superscript asterisk above YEARS OF EXPERIENCE, and the asterisk resolves the way a good footnote should – *COMBINED. Fine print, promoted to the headline. To be plain about it, this die is our invention, offered to the branch as a sketch.
On a blueberry keychain with an antique-brass ring, the die sits centered below the rivet in blind deboss – a footnote you can carry. The dopp kits raise the register. A black bag rests over a dark-espresso one, and each front face takes the same die at compact maker's-mark size in its lower-right corner, both pressed tone on tone with the foil left in the drawer.
Latitude Fifty-Three
Our second proposal begins with where the branch stands. The City of Edmonton records its position as 53°32′43″ north, and the city's newcomer guide rounds that figure to latitude 53. Warren says the branch serves clients across Canada while giving Edmonton and northern Alberta its closest attention, and a latitude line draws that idea well – one precise station on a rule that runs the full width of the country. So the die reads LATITUDE 53 NORTH above a graduated measuring rule, with graduation ticks descending from the right half and a single downward triangle touching the bar above the word EDMONTON. It looks like an instrument, which suits a firm that organizes its analysis across six areas, from retirement planning to insurance analysis, and measures before it advises. Like the Fine Print, this one comes from our side of the bench.
It lands on a country-gray passport cover, the self-textured blank we reserve for quieter work. The floral F that shipped on the blank is fully retired, and the latitude lockup takes its place at generous centered scale, tone-on-tone blind deboss matched to the depth and grain of a real press. Gray reading against gray, by light and shadow alone – a long-service object for a firm whose clients live across the country while its coordinate holds.
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 Investia Edmonton and you'd like these made real, or anything here changed – say hello through our contact page.