Ready, Set, Booked × Leatherius Woodman – a leather stamping study
From the Practice Log – an ongoing series of stamping studies on real-world marks.
A July study.
Ready, Set, Booked is a travel agency in Arlington, Virginia, that plans around occasions worth keeping. Founder Kara Simmons started it to help people celebrate milestones with intention – a honeymoon, say, or a retirement – and she talks about travel the way a bookbinder talks about chapters. The tagline reads “travel that marks the moment,” and her own fuller sentence goes further: “We don’t just plan trips; we curate the space for you to savor your story.” A stamping die works the same territory. It presses an occasion into something that keeps it, which is why this mark had been on our bench list since spring.
The mark earned the study on its own. An overlapping navy serif monogram spells RSB, and across its waist runs the agency’s name in small warm gold, with thin rules reaching out to either side. The strokes are tall and high in contrast, and where the letters cross, the counters close to slivers. The honest test of a die. Under pressure those counters either hold their edges or they fill, and we pressed to find out which; one corner of the S is still under discussion at our bench. The live logo, we also noticed, sets the name without the terminal exclamation point the public name often carries, so the die follows suit.
The mark, as found
Pressed
Blueberry follows the navy of the monogram, and caramel follows the warm gold of the name and its rules. Black carries the whole lockup in gold foil.
Ready, set
The name runs on a countdown, and the companion design takes off from it. A vintage suitcase launches from a starting line above READY SET BOOKED, pressed lengthwise so the sprint reads down the full run of the tag. For an agency whose founder treats a booking as the opening of a chapter, a standing start seemed like the right picture.
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 Ready, Set, Booked and you'd like these made real, or anything here changed – say hello through our contact page.