Three brand-art luggage-tag studies for USAA
From the Practice Log – an ongoing series of stamping studies on real-world organizations.
An August study.
Shelter, welcome, and practical help
USAA began in 1922 when 25 Army officers agreed to insure one another's vehicles. Its current mission centers on helping military members and their families achieve financial security through service, advice, and a long culture of mutual responsibility.
The official emblem is highly geometric: paired bands sweep upward and outward from a narrow center, while repeated vertical strokes create an orderly rhythm below. These studies do not reproduce the eagle or the wordmark. Instead, they turn those construction principles into three plain things people recognize immediately.
The resulting luggage tags could suit an employee milestone, leadership offsite, conference, partner occasion, community collaboration, or year-end thank-you where policy permits. The pictures are deliberately human and useful, without military insignia, faux-patriotic badges, or claims of official approval.
Leather and treatment
Midnight navy, saddle tan, and deep oxblood leather repeat the same motif across each family. Blind impressions and quiet metallic lines keep the designs restrained enough for colleagues, partners, and community recipients.
The three concepts
1. Tent With Open Flaps
An A-frame tent opens around a narrow central doorway. Its layered flaps follow the nested, tapering rise of the emblem's bands, turning a protective structure into a portable shelter that simply says welcome.
2. The Open Gate
A plain fence breaks at the center for one gate swung inward. The regular posts borrow the emblem's repeated vertical rhythm, while the central counterform becomes a real opening rather than a symbolic one.
3. Jumper Cables
Two open clamps face one another as their cables cross in a single loop. The image recalls the organization's verified beginnings in drivers helping cover one another, expressed as ordinary roadside assistance instead of corporate history.
These are independent design studies for appropriate team, partner, collaborator, member, alumni, or client occasions. No affiliation or endorsement is implied. Every image is a render used to test the object before cutting a physical die.
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.
If you're USAA and you'd like these made real, or anything here changed – say hello through our contact page.