Luxury Travel By Lee × Leatherius Woodman – a leather stamping study
From the Practice Log – an ongoing series of stamping studies on real-world marks.
A July study.
Luxury Travel By Lee is a travel advisory in Northwest Arkansas, run by Lee McAhren, who has worked in travel since 1999 and has stood on both sides of the desk, first as Director of Sales for a major hotel chain and now as an advisor who stays with a trip before it begins and after it ends. She and her husband Camron also own aviation companies in four cities, from Springdale up to Kansas City, which lets her call the family business “all things travel” and mean it literally. The promise on her site is four words: “TRAVEL WITHOUT THE STRESS”.
The live site carries typography alone. The header stacks plain black “Luxury Travel” over “By Lee” on a bright neutral ground, and that restraint drew us in, because a name set in honest type gives a stamping die real work on day one and an open field on day two. And the name hides a gift: in a sailor's vocabulary the lee is the sheltered side, the side out of the wind. A company named Lee that promises travel without the stress, owned by people who fly airplanes for a living. We could hardly leave that alone.
As found
The mark this study proposes
The proposed mark takes the pun at its word. An airfoil sits at the center, and three smooth streamlines curve along its lee side, where the air runs quiet after the wing has done its work. A tiny airplane rides above. Beneath it all, LUXURY TRAVEL BY LEE in caps over “TRAVEL WITHOUT THE STRESS”. We drew the streamlines rougher in an early pass, thinking turbulence giving way to calm told the truer story, but ragged lines press poorly at luggage-tag scale, and the calm alone says enough.
Pressed
We pressed both versions lengthwise on two leathers drawn from the site, a pale gray-sand that follows its bright neutral ground and a deep dark espresso that follows its editorial type. Black with gold foil is the automatic third, and the streamlines take the foil especially well.
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 Luxury Travel By Lee and you'd like these made real, or anything here changed – say hello through our contact page.