You Can Fly Travels × Leatherius Woodman – a leather stamping study
From the Practice Log – an ongoing series of stamping studies on real-world marks.
A July study.
You Can Fly Travels is Kim Thompson's agency; Thompson has been in the industry better than thirteen years, and our own records place the desk in Gallatin, Tennessee, a note we keep on our side of the ledger. Their story page holds that travel starts with connection, and gives the mission whole: “to provide stress-free, personalized service for a memorable vacation experience.” The finished product, in their telling, is a memory; the itinerary is scaffolding, and scaffolding comes down once the thing stands. We liked that. A travel agent who talks like a builder deserves a maker's answer.
The mark is what stopped us. At the left stands a thin-line London clock tower, Big Ben at a squint, with a small clock face and a scatter of four-point stars overhead; beside it, large serif capitals read YOU CAN FLY, with TRAVELS letterspaced small beneath. Look close and the clock's hand is a tiny capital L. Drawing this deliberate is commissioned and owned, and thin, even line-work happens to be exactly what a stamping die asks for.
The mark, as found
Pressed
White line on a transparent ground, the source artwork vanishes wholesale against a white screen; we laid it over deep navy just to see what we had. Leather settles the question, since a deboss reads by shadow. Navy-blue and pale gray-sand take the mark blind, the same deep-and-airy pairing their own site keeps. Black carries it in gold foil.
Paper plane to the stars
For the companion we folded the name into paper. A single dart, three facets and one center crease, sits high in the corner with its nose aimed up-right at forty-five degrees. The dashed trail behind it enters low on the left and rises gently; near the middle of the sky it takes exactly one full loop, then runs straight to the plane's tail. Overhead hang three four-point stars, the same stars that ride above their clock tower, and the tower stays home with the flagship. Along the bottom, one line of bold serif capitals: YOU CAN FLY.
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 You Can Fly Travels and you'd like these made real, or anything here changed – say hello through our contact page.