USAA × Leatherius Woodman – a leather stamping study
From the Practice Log – an ongoing series of stamping studies on real-world marks.
An August study.
USAA began in 1922, when twenty-five Army officers, judged too risky by the insurers of the day, met in San Antonio and chose to insure one another. The association they founded serves military members and their families from that same city a century on, under a mission it states in a single breath: “to empower members to achieve financial security through competitive products, exceptional service and trusted advice.” One in four of its employees, the company says, has served in the military or is a military spouse. We made this study with Donna Respondek of San Antonio in mind.
Pressed
The complete USAA lockup – four wing bands converging on a central upstroke, set above the plain capitals – is a wide mark, so it runs the long axis of three lengthwise luggage tags, strap to the left. Blueberry, a deep muted navy, is the closest leather we cut to the institutional blue sampled from the mark itself, and pale greige gray sand answers it the way the mark's own near-white ground does. The black tag alone carries the gold pass, the one foil this study permits, because a financial institution wears gold best when it wears it once.
The covered circle
The founding act is already a diagram: twenty-five men, each one covering the next, until the ring closes. Our companion die draws exactly that – a circle built from twenty-five identical arc segments laid like roof shingles, every segment lapping over the head of its neighbor, so the cover runs unbroken the whole way around. The numerals 1922 sit at the center. USAA already owns a fine wing device, and this study leaves it alone; the ring stands on the story.
We did wonder whether twenty-five segments would survive at maker's-mark scale. On the smallest presses they blur into a woven ring, and we have decided to live with that: the count carries the history, and the unbroken closure carries the meaning at every size.
On the toiletry bags the ring shrinks to a maker's mark, blind-debossed low in the right corner of each front face – a navy bag stacked over deep espresso brown, matte and quiet, as this product always asks to be.
The keychain fobs carry the circle centered on the face, below the rivet. Navy sits beside black, and both stay unfoiled, so the ring reads as pure relief in the leather.
The catchall tray gives the die its widest stage. Pressed deep at the center of the golden tan Arizona base, the ring waits where keys and coins land at the end of a working day.
Two wrap journals close the set, deep espresso beside warm mid-gray, each carrying the circle pressed small in the lower right corner of the front panel. It is the quietest version of the idea, and perhaps the truest one.
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 USAA and you'd like these made real, or anything here changed – say hello through our contact page.