Emory Pediatrics × Leatherius Woodman – a leather stamping study
From the Practice Log – an ongoing series of stamping studies on real-world marks.
An August study.
Emory Pediatrics is the pediatric residency of Emory University School of Medicine, and it is easy to admire from a distance and easier still up close. A hundred and five residents move between four hospitals in two Atlanta healthcare systems, and in a year they help care for more than half a million children at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta and at Grady. The department says its purpose in nine words: “We are committed to giving children a bright future.”
The residents arrive by long roads. Some taught abroad or rode ambulances before medicine claimed them, and the program asks them all to become physicians who “lead in the communities they serve.” That is a serious thing to ask of a tired person, which is why we wanted to make them something warm.
The mark, as found
The School of Medicine lockup pairs the university shield with a large custom serif EMORY and the smaller line SCHOOL OF MEDICINE beneath. The shield is divided on the diagonal and carries a torch and a trumpet. The wordmark is wide, which settles the first question of the study for us: it wants the long axis of a luggage tag.
Pressed
We ran the lockup lengthwise along the tag, the way its width asks. It is pressed into navy blueberry and golden arizona tan, the two leathers that sit closest to Emory’s own blue and gold. The black tag carries the gold foil pass, the one finish in our line that answers the university’s gold directly.
The kept flame
Our first sketches borrowed the shield’s torch outright, and we put them away; that flame belongs to the crest. A candle steadied by two hands says the same thing more quietly, and pediatrics is mostly the art of the quieter version. So the companion medallion holds a grown hand cupped beneath a small candle, with a child’s hand resting alongside. EMORY PEDIATRICS rings the top and ATLANTA closes it below, because this is where the light gets carried – between four hospitals and from one shift to the next.
On the toiletry bags the medallion sits small in the lower right corner, a maker’s mark on a navy bag stacked over deep espresso brown, pressed blind so it reads as shadow and relief.
The keychains put the school’s two colors side by side, one fob in navy and one in golden tan, the medallion debossed below the rivet. A pocket is a good place for a small reminder of what the badge and the long hours are for.
And the catchall tray, in the same golden tan, takes the medallion at full size. A resident empties their pockets somewhere every night; the tray argues for it being the same place twice.
Four lanterns
The journals carry a second design, made for the writing a residency actually does. Four lanterns hang from one cord, one for each hospital where the program keeps watch, and beneath them a single line: FOUR HOSPITALS ONE LIGHT. We pressed the pair in navy and in pale warm greige – one journal dark as night float, the other pale as the first hour of morning rounds.
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 Emory Pediatrics and you'd like these made real, or anything here changed – say hello through our contact page.