Quartz Health Solutions × Leatherius Woodman – a leather stamping study
From the Practice Log – an ongoing series of stamping studies on real-world marks.
An August study.
Quartz Health Solutions calls itself a well-living company, "dedicated to igniting the power within us all to create a life well-lived." Its roots run back to the local community health plans of early-1980s Wisconsin; one of them, formed in 1983, was among the first rural-based HMOs in the country. Several regional plans came together under the Quartz name in 2017, and today its local, personal kind of care reaches across four states. The homepage promises plans "designed to support the whole you," which is a gentler sentence than this industry usually writes.
We found them through one small order. Last September a piece from our shop went to Claire Anne Keyes, whom our records list as a product marketing strategist at Quartz. The study below is entirely our own idea – a maker's letter to a company whose people spend their working days turning coverage into care.
The mark, as found
The Quartz wordmark is a logotype with real anatomy. A capital Q opens the word with a round, generous bowl, and its tail refuses to stop where tails usually do – it sweeps down and runs beneath the letters, left to right, like a path setting out. The rest of the word is rounded and heavy, warm even at small sizes. In the brand's own red it reads as pure energy; pressed into leather it keeps the warmth and trades the shout for a murmur.
Pressed
Broad marks want to lie down, so the wordmark runs lengthwise along the luggage tags, the whole lockup stretched along the long axis with the Q's tail sweeping underneath. We pressed it first in poppy red, the leather closest to the mark's own red. Beside it sit blueberry and pale sea-blue, the deep night navy and the cool mint that steady the red everywhere Quartz puts it. All three tags are blind debossed, tone on tone, the mark held in the leather's own shadow.
The spark, carried
Quartz captions its logo "Find your spark," and its mission speaks of igniting the power within us all. The people who would hold these pieces – member-experience teams and the partners who walk families through hard weeks – spend that spark on other people all day. So the first companion mark is a hand lantern. Inside the glass, where the flame would be, burns a small four-pointed spark. A lantern is a light you carry and shelter, held up for whoever walks beside you, which strikes us as a fair description of the work.
On the toiletry bags the lantern sits as a maker's mark in the lower right corner, pressed blind into navy over deep espresso. The keychain duo splits the finish: the black fob carries the lantern in gold, one lit window in the dark, and the poppy red fob keeps the quiet blind press.
The tail of the Q
The second companion lets the wordmark's best feature keep going. The bowl of the Q stays behind as an open ring, and the tail runs on past where the word would end, dipping and cresting the way an actual road does, thinning as it climbs, until it reaches a spark on the horizon. Underneath runs a line built from their own vocabulary: TOWARD A LIFE WELL LIVED. Their phrase carries a hyphen; a stamping die refuses one, so the brass reads the words plain, and we think the sentiment survives the surgery.
The path is pressed at generous size into the golden tan of the catchall tray, the dish that catches keys and badge at the end of a working day. The journal duo carries the same road in the lower right corner, in navy and pale greige – one dark cover and one light, for whatever kind of week it has been.
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 Quartz Health Solutions and you'd like these made real, or anything here changed – say hello through our contact page.