Make-A-Wish Central and Northern Florida × Leatherius Woodman – a leather stamping study
From the Practice Log – an ongoing series of stamping studies on real-world marks.
A August study.
Make-A-Wish Central and Northern Florida has granted wishes since 1994, and its own pages now count more than 7,000 of them; a 2022 chapter release reported 6,120, which makes the 7,000th a recent milestone. The territory runs to 45 counties across three regions of Florida, from Maitland up to Tallahassee, and the chapter states its purpose in a single sentence: “Together, we create life-changing wishes for children with critical illnesses.” The work is funded without a dollar of federal or state money, and the chapter’s FY2024 audit puts 65 cents of every dollar into wish granting and related programs.
Every wish has the same first mile. The national referral page asks for a child older than two and a half and younger than eighteen, living with a critical illness, and it opens the door wide; a doctor can start a referral, and so can a parent. From there the organization lets the child’s imagination act as the driving force in shaping the wish. We kept returning to that first mile while we worked, because it is the part of the story an outsider rarely sees.
Pressed – the logo, lengthwise
The chapter carries the developed national identity, a custom serif wordmark crossed by a broad shooting-star arc that ends in a five-point star. The lockup is wide, so the luggage tags take it lengthwise, strap to the left. The trio starts from blueberry, the atlas leather closest to the official Make-A-Wish blue of PMS 2935. Country-gray sits beside it for the brand’s generous white space. Dark espresso anchors the third slot, the closest formal non-black neighbor in the atlas. That keeps every tag in these renders blind deboss and avoids a gold pass that would say something the brand never says.
The companion – one outreach path
Public accounts of the chapter’s healthcare outreach describe relationships built with all six local children’s hospitals between Orlando and Pensacola, one path worked again and again so that eligible children stop slipping past the wish process. That path became our companion die. One continuous route line crosses the plate from southeast to northwest in five straight reaches, threaded through six equal open stations. The stations carry no hierarchy on purpose; in this geometry every referral weighs the same. The route also borrows nothing from the logo above it – the sky over this little map stays empty.
On the keychains the route compresses to a maker’s mark below the rivet, its strokes thickened so the small blind press keeps its counters open. We paired blueberry with country-gray, brand blue against stone quiet, sized for the pocket of a referral partner or a hospital team.
The passport covers take the route at its generous size, centered and blind debossed into the leather’s own texture. Travel sits close to this mission; wish delivery moves families, and the chapter serves children who travel into its territory. Here blueberry meets black, where the unfoiled press reads as a quiet shadow relief, about as far from childish as leather gets. Whether a mission-driven chapter would ever commission such a thing, we honestly cannot say; the study stands 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 Make-A-Wish Central and Northern Florida and you'd like these made real, or anything here changed – say hello through our contact page.