Uber × Leatherius Woodman – a leather stamping study
From the Practice Log – an ongoing series of stamping studies on real-world marks.
A August study.
Uber states its mission in one line: "We reimagine the way the world moves for the better." The current brand platform is warmer still – "Where there's a will, we're on our way" – a promise, in the company's own telling, to show up for life's moments, big and small. Inside the company that powers all that movement sits a global legal organization, and inside it works Nicole Benincasa, Senior Regulatory Counsel, who has spent more than eleven years on the emerging rules of rideshare and delivery, and lately of autonomous vehicles and AI. She has said it is her pleasure to lead Uber's pro bono efforts, and of the Gateway to Good platform she said: "The Gateway to Good platform is first-of-its-kind. It's really unlocked a whole new world of opportunities for us."
That overlap is what we designed from. Showing up is Uber's consumer promise, and it is also the basic act at the heart of pro bono work – for a matter, or for a volunteer client half a world away. So we imagined the recognition gifts we would press for the people who do that quiet work, choosing leathers from our rack and cutting dies of our own design. Uber has never seen this study. We press first and say hello afterward.
The mark, as found
Four lowercase letters and no symbol. The 2018 wordmark, credited on the public record to Wolff Olins working with Uber's own brand team, is a wide geometric sans that sits low and confident on the line. It was drawn to live as black on white, which happens to be the native language of a stamping die.
Pressed faithfully first. A lockup this wide asks for a lengthwise tag, so the wordmark runs along the strap edge of the blank. We pulled a grayscale straight from the rack: a true black tag, where the letters take this study's only gold foil, flanked by warm country gray and pale gray sand under blind deboss. A black-and-white brand, with the tones between, rendered in leather.
Where there's a will
The platform line reads differently in a legal department. Elsewhere, will means resolve. Down the hall from Ethics and Compliance it is also a document with witnesses, and behind both readings stands the proverb about the will and the way. We debated pressing the whole sentence and kept cutting; the full line crowded the plate and over-explained the joke. What survived is three stacked words – WHERE THERE'S A WILL – and an answer drawn beneath them: a single road line that leaves a small open circle, bends once, and arrives at a solid dot a little higher than where it began. The words state the will. The road is the way.
On the dopp kits the die shrinks to a maker's mark and sits in the lower right corner of each front face. The stack is true black over deep espresso brown, about as close as leather comes to a black suit, and on black an unfoiled press reads as pure shadow relief. That felt right for a team whose best work is mostly invisible.
The keychain duo keeps the brand's two poles on one ring: true black, where the die takes gold below the rivet, and pale gray sand pressed blind. Night ride and first light.
Uber powers business travel, so passport covers join the study by right. For the duo we borrowed the palette passports already wear around the world: a deep navy and a deep wine burgundy, each pressed blind and centered generously clear of the stitching. The navy is the corporate blue that law trusts. The wine belongs on a senior partner's shelf.
The journals carry the design at its most generous scale, noticeably larger than the monogram it replaces in the lower right. Deep espresso brown for the boardroom register, warm caramel tan for the road. Between covers like these live meeting notes and pro bono intake sheets – the will, in longhand.
You have arrived
Every trip ends with the same quiet line from the navigation, and so does every day. The catchall tray is where keys and coins land once the door closes, so we gave it a die of its own: YOU HAVE ARRIVED in two stacked lines, and beneath them the destination marker seen from above, a solid dot resting inside an open ring. The keys come to rest exactly on the words.
The tray comes in one leather, a golden tan whose natural grain we leave untouched around the pressed panel, and which photographs a shade brighter than life. We count that as luck. Arrival deserves some light.
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 Uber and you'd like these made real, or anything here changed – say hello through our contact page.