Nike × Leatherius Woodman – a leather stamping study
From the Practice Log – an ongoing series of stamping studies on real-world marks.
An August study.
Nike keeps a waffle iron in its archives in Beaverton. It came out of the Bowerman family kitchen, drafted because runners needed grip, and the company's own archive treats the string of imperfect experiments that followed as the blueprint for how it still works. We love that they kept the iron. Even better is the asterisk: the mission promises inspiration and innovation "to every athlete* in the world," and the note behind that asterisk reads, "If you have a body, you are an athlete."
We press marks into leather for a living. A company whose founding artifact is a household press giving texture to material was always going to reach us, and this study is the reach back.
The mark, as found
One tapered wing, drawn in a single motion, somehow already moving while it stands still. A mark this complete leaves a stamper a single job, which is fidelity; we pressed it exactly as found.
Pressed
The Swoosh is a wide mark, so it runs lengthwise along the tag, rising toward its point the whole way. We cut the family in blueberry and gray sand – a navy remembering the first Waffle Trainer's blue upper, and a pale warm greige for the white ground the mark usually stands on. The black tag carries the Swoosh in gold.
The grid that learned to run
Pressing a pattern into a material to change what that material can do – that is the waffle iron's whole lesson, and somewhere in the middle of this study we noticed it is also a fair description of our trade. So the first companion die is a waffle grid. It holds its discipline for six even columns, then the studs lengthen and the rows thin, until two last marks taper off the field like strides. Under a thumb, the blind deboss does what the original plates did: it turns a surface into texture.
On the toiletry bags the grid sits low in the corner as a quiet maker's mark, pressed into honeyed russet over dark espresso – waffle over cast iron, and yes, we chose the pair for exactly that reason. The catchall tray gives it room to spread across the golden tan base, where keys and whatever else the day carried will land on it every evening.
The line you cross tomorrow
Nike's own telling of its most famous words now frames greatness as a choice renewed at every workout and every comeback. The second die honors the renewing. A starting line, double-ruled and scored with lane ticks, and a single path that crosses it and bends away into the first turn, gaining weight as it goes. Beneath the line, two words: BEGIN AGAIN.
The keychain is what a hand finds at every departure, so the fob became a small daily marker. We cut the duo in poppy red and black. The black fob takes its words in gold. The journals hold the longer form of the same promise – a season starting over, page after page – in blueberry and deep forest green, an Oregon pine of a color.
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 Nike and you'd like these made real, or anything here changed – say hello through our contact page.