Shelton Travel Service × Leatherius Woodman – a leather stamping study
From the Practice Log – an ongoing series of stamping studies on real-world marks.
A July study.
Shelton Travel Service has been planning trips for Kansas City since 1945, from an office near the Country Club Plaza that still welcomes clients through the door. That span covers the jet age and the internet, and the agency has outlasted every obituary written for its trade. The work today is package vacations and cruises to destinations worldwide. What stopped us was the mark: a black square holding a single white route, a stroke that climbs the right edge and then arcs down across the square to the lower left, where a small cobalt arrowhead marks the arrival.
The only logo we could find is ninety-five pixels square, and a file that small tempts a craftsman to improve it. We redrew the curve twice at higher resolution. Both drafts drifted out of the family of the original, so we threw them away and pressed the small source exactly as found. A die forgives a modest file sooner than it forgives a wrong curve, and the curve is this mark's whole argument.
The mark, as found
Pressed
We pressed it into Blueberry, a deep navy-blue with enough life to keep the square's field from reading as plain black, and into Turquoise, a paler sea-blue that answers the arrowhead in leather. Black with gold rounds out the set, as it usually does.
The route is the handle
The companion design begins with a suitcase, the plainest emblem of the trade. Its handle is the route, the same curve flying in and settling exactly where a hand would take hold. The tag reads KANSAS CITY SINCE 1945.
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 Shelton Travel Service and you'd like these made real, or anything here changed – say hello through our contact page.