K & S Travel × Leatherius Woodman – a leather stamping study
From the Practice Log – an ongoing series of stamping studies on real-world marks.
A July study.
K & S Travel is a travel practice in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and it began at home. Kim Caudill established the agency in March 2001 so she could keep working while raising her newborn son; she already had long experience in the trade by then, and today she counts more than thirty-five years of it. The practice specializes in Sandals and Beaches resort vacations across the Caribbean and Mexico, with honeymoons and destination weddings at the center, and reports more than 1,300 of those resort bookings. Twenty-five years on, the home-based start still reads in how personally the whole thing is run.
Her mark is what asked for the study. A white palm splits a solid teal circle at the trunk, and two small hearts sit beneath the fronds. Off to the right, past a brush-written K&S Travel, a small airplane climbs away on a dotted route. An emblem that tucks two hearts under a palm and then draws the departure line is quietly telling the story of every honeymoon it has ever booked. We wanted to know whether a blind deboss would keep that tenderness.
The mark, as found
Pressed lengthwise
The full mark runs the length of the tag, medallion leading. We pressed it on a pale sea-blue that follows the single teal Kim uses everywhere, and on a gray-sand that answers the bright white ground of her site. Black with gold foil closes the set. The palm and hearts are knocked out white in the original; in leather those cutouts become raised islands inside the pressed circle, and they held their edges better than we expected.
The ampersand, routed
Kim writes her ampersand as one continuous brush stroke, and an ampersand is already a route with two loops in it. So we let the character travel. The companion redraws the & as a dotted flight path whose two turns close into hearts, with the airplane crossing above and K&S TRAVEL over SINCE 2001 set beneath. One journey, signed by two people. Portrait, so it hangs straight from a suitcase handle.
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 K & S Travel and you'd like these made real, or anything here changed – say hello through our contact page.