Ketolicious Food Co LLC × Leatherius Woodman – a leather stamping study
From the Practice Log – an ongoing series of stamping studies on real-world marks.
An August study.
Ketolicious Food Co LLC is a just-formed food company in San Tan Valley, Arizona. It is new enough that the link above goes to its formation notice as the San Manuel Miner printed it, the public filing being the only page the company has so far. We like the filing. One name, Jamie Cartter, stands in every role the state asks to be filled, which is the surest sign of a company one person willed into existence. And the name made us smile: fold keto into delicious and you get Ketolicious. Whether the kitchen behind it keeps to any particular creed, the record leaves open; what the name promises either way is appetite.
Jamie has held our leather before, which is why the name rang a bell when the notice ran. A company this young owns little beyond its name and a filing date. To a stamp maker that reads as an invitation, so this study is our proposal for what the first mark could be.
The mark, as found
No developed mark exists yet, so we begin where the state began: the name set plainly, letter for letter as the record spells it.
The mark this study proposes
A place set for you. The roundel carries the company name around a table laid from above, a plate flanked by its fork and knife, with the filing year beneath. The oldest promise a food company can make is that when you arrive there will be a chair out and a plate down, and we wanted the first mark to say exactly that.
Pressed
With no palette on record to borrow, we let the leather argue for the colors, and half our line happens to read like a dessert menu, which felt right for a company with delicious folded into its name. The trio pairs golden arizona, the tan that carries the home state's name, with smooth caramel. Dark espresso closes the row. Every press in this study is a blind deboss, tone on tone, the mark sitting in the hide the way a seal sits in wax.
Two for a pocket
The same roundel at fob scale, in deep wine sangria and pale gray sand, the wine and the linen of a good table. A keychain passes through a hand a dozen times a day, so a young mark earns its keep there faster than anywhere else.
The toiletry bags
A stacked pair in harvest colors, honeyed russet over chestnut sicilian brown. Here the mark presses small into the lower right corner of each bag, the way a maker signs a finished piece, and the unfoiled press lets the shadow do the talking.
Worth sharing
The study's second design is for the day there is something to hand across a counter. A covered serving dish with steam climbing past the finial, and an olive sprig rising on either side. Beneath it a banner says what good food is for.
On the catchall tray it presses large and central into golden arizona, the one leather our trays come in and happily also the study's home-state tan. A tray by the door is where a day empties its pockets, and we liked that small ceremony happening over a covered dish.
The journals take it as a corner signature, in deep pine green and warm caramel. Companies that begin as a single filing get written into being in notebooks first, menus tried and sums redone until something holds. If Jamie fills even one of these on the way, the study has done its work.
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 Ketolicious Food Co LLC and you'd like these made real, or anything here changed – say hello through our contact page.