Santa Barbara Unified × Leatherius Woodman – a leather stamping study
From the Practice Log – an ongoing series of stamping studies on real-world marks.
An August study.
Santa Barbara Unified is the public school district of Santa Barbara, California, and its mission line is the best sentence we have read all month: the district prepares students "for a world that is yet to be created." The daily half of that promise sits right on the seal – "Every child, every chance, every day." A future nobody has seen, kept by work that repeats every morning. We liked that pairing enough to spend a week with their mark, and this study is what came of it.
The mark, as found
One circle, one blue. Inside it stands a mission-style building with a square bell tower and an arched doorway, and two palms lean in from either side. Beneath the architecture, the district's name sits above its promise. The whole seal behaves like a good teacher – calm, and legible from the back of the room. We took it exactly as the district drew it.
Pressed
The seal is compact and round, so it wanted upright luggage tags. We pressed it blind into blueberry and caramel – the district's own deep blue beside the warm tan of an old school satchel. A third tag in pale sea-blue joins the pair, because the city keeps the ocean close.
The open door
The seal's arched doorway kept pulling at us. A door standing open is what "every chance" looks like when somebody draws it, so we drew it. Inside a plain circle, the arch frames a horizon, with a path running through the doorway toward a rising sun. The two palms stayed where the seal put them. Beneath the scene, the promise runs in plain capitals, one line per phrase.
Pressed blind into keychain fobs, the emblem becomes the kind of small object that rides a lanyard between campuses and turns up in a coat pocket years later, still holding the door open. One fob is blueberry; the other is a golden tan that renders bright, as if the leather had borrowed a little of the coast's light.
For the bigger occasions – a retiring principal, a leadership retreat – the same emblem sits small in the lower corner of a toiletry bag, navy over chestnut, placed where a maker would sign the work.
A world yet to be created
The second design takes the mission at its word. We drew a globe the way a cartographer begins one, equator first, then a few meridians, and left the outline unfinished – the stroke lifts off before the circle closes, and a small star marks where the pen stopped. Whoever picks the drawing back up decides what the world becomes. Below it, in plain capitals: FOR A WORLD YET TO BE CREATED, over the district's name.
It belongs on a journal more than anywhere else, because the notebooks of teachers and instructional leaders are where that future gets its unglamorous first drafts. We pressed a pair of wrap journals, one in blueberry and one in gray sand, a pale warm greige that reads like fresh paper. Blind deboss on both; the mark sits as quiet relief in the corner, the way a good margin note should.
And once more on a catchall tray in golden tan – the dish by the front door where keys and a staff badge land at the end of a school day. The unfinished globe sits at the center, so each evening empties out on top of the reminder. We are aware that is a lot of weight for a dish to carry. It carries it well.
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 Santa Barbara Unified and you'd like these made real, or anything here changed – say hello through our contact page.