Panda Travel / Panda Online × Leatherius Woodman – a leather stamping study
From the Practice Log – an ongoing series of stamping studies on real-world marks.
A July study.
Panda Travel / Panda Online is a full-service Hawaii travel agency, founded in June 1981, that plans vacations “to, from and within Hawaii” – their phrase, and worth keeping, because the small word “within” tells you they book for neighbors as well as visitors. With Pan Tours it forms the locally owned Panda Group, which says it has ticketed more than one million passengers. The line under the wordmark states it plainly: “Hawaii Owned & Operated Over 40 Years”. An agency that has outlasted four decades of airline mergers and booking engines, and supports University of Hawaii athletic scholarships along the way, has earned a study.
The mark is what pulled us in. A black-and-white panda sits inside a thin light-blue circle drawn as a globe, one latitude line and one longitude line curving behind it, and the wordmark changes color mid-title: white “Panda”, warm gold “Online”. There is a footgun in the file, too. The header art arrives white on transparency, so on a white page the wordmark simply vanishes; we had to lay it on dark navy before we could see what we would be pressing. Die scale asked one more honesty of us – the registered symbol and the tiny longevity line had to go, since below a certain size fine print becomes noise.
The mark, as found
Pressed lengthwise
We pressed the full lockup lengthwise on two leathers first, turquoise for the pale blue of the globe ring and the Hawaii water behind the whole identity, Sicilian brown for the warm gold of “Online” brought down to something a tag can wear daily. Black carries the gold foil.
Since 1981
For the companion we gave the panda a window seat. It looks out through a rounded airplane frame wearing a six-flower lei, and SINCE 1981 sits beneath in letters wide enough for a die to hold. We ran it portrait, because a window wants to stand upright. Six flowers was a die-maker's call; fewer looked sparse at tag scale, and more began to crowd the glass.
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 Panda Travel / Panda Online and you'd like these made real, or anything here changed – say hello through our contact page.