NextGen Association Summit × Leatherius Woodman – a leather stamping study
From the Practice Log – an ongoing series of stamping studies on real-world marks.
A July study.
NextGen Association Summit is the small room ASAE sets aside each year for association professionals still early in their climb, and this September 2–4 that room assembles at the Canopy by Hilton, where Columbus’s Short North meets the Arena District. Up to twenty-five scholars are chosen by application, and the program hosts the whole journey for them, airfare through the last scheduled evening; Experience Columbus powers the summit, so the city belongs to the curriculum as much as the sessions do. When a cohort that small travels that far together, the shared week becomes the point.
ASAE’s mark is an angular orange star set beside a lowercase asae in heavy black, with an italic subline too fine to survive a die; at tag scale we let it rest. The summit travels under the organization’s core, so we set star and wordmark over a plain line reading NEXTGEN ASSOCIATION SUMMIT 2026, and that restraint is exactly what a hot stamp rewards. ASAE calls the program an investment in high-potential leaders whose scholars build “creative confidence”; pressing the mark into leather felt like taking the phrase at its word.
The mark, as found
Pressed lengthwise
The lockup goes down the long way, deep enough that the star holds a little shadow. One pressing lands on a honeyed ochre that meets ASAE’s orange more than halfway, the other on a dark country gray that gives the black wordmark its quiet. The third tag is black, and there the mark goes down in gold.
Twenty-five lights on the arch
High Street through the Short North runs beneath a procession of iron arches, and from the Canopy’s door an evening in the neighborhood passes under them almost by default. Our companion picks one arch out in exactly twenty-five lights, a bulb for each scholar, with NEXTGEN SUMMIT across the crown and COLUMBUS 2026 beneath. We tried a fuller string first and it read as any lit arch in any city; the count is what makes it theirs, though a scholar would have to be told to notice.
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 NextGen Association Summit and you'd like these made real, or anything here changed – say hello through our contact page.