South High School × Leatherius Woodman – a leather stamping study

From the Practice Log – an ongoing series of stamping studies on real-world logos.

An August study.

For South High School.

First, for the warm-up, we pressed the official seal – the Spartan helmet inside its ring of five values – onto a golden tan catchall tray, at the generous size a seal deserves.

Official South High School Spartan seal in blue, charcoal, black and white

South High School seal blind debossed on an arizona leather catchall tray

Next, a stamp of our own. South High was established in 1957 amid the farmland of South Bakersfield, so we drew the Spartan helmet coming up over plowed furrows the way the sun comes up over a field – SOUTH HIGH overhead, SINCE 1957 in the ground line.

Black die art showing a Spartan helmet rising over 1957 South Bakersfield furrows

We pressed it on a trio of luggage tags that maps the seal itself: pale sea-blue for the Spartan blue and warm gray for the charcoal. The third tag is pale sand, standing in for the seal's white field.

It looks genuinely beautiful.

South High sunrise design blind debossed on three leather luggage tags

The same sunrise sits low in the corner of the toiletry bags, warm gray over deep espresso.

South High sunrise design blind debossed on two stacked leather toiletry bags

And finally, the one we liked the most. The motto is “Spartans Do It Right”, so we set SPARTANS DO IT in plain capitals and let a proofreader's caret slip RIGHT in above the line. The edit makes the sentence true.

Black die art using a proofreader caret to complete the South High motto

On the keychains it rides in pale sea-blue and warm gray.

Spartans Do It Right design blind debossed on two leather keychains

And on the journals – where corrections belong – pale sea-blue beside true black. On the black cover the unfoiled press reads as a quiet shadow relief.

Spartans Do It Right design blind debossed on two leather wrap journals

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 South High School and you'd like these made real, or anything here changed – say hello through our contact page.