About the Brand
The Knife Studio is a positioning consultancy for Series A+ SaaS companies. We diagnose and fix positioning that has fractured under growth — then use AI to get the sharper story into the hands of sales teams fast. Think operator authority meets surgical precision. Our clients are founders and CMOs at companies with proven product-market fit who need positioning that does commercial work, not just looks good.
The three brand pillars: Sharp (decisive, precise, no BS), Surgical (careful, expert, methodical), Clarifying (illuminating, problem-solving).
What We Need
Three deliverables:
1. Knife — Wordmark
1. The Knife — Wordmark
2. The Knife — Icon / Mark
3. EdgeScore — Sub-brand logo (proprietary diagnostic tool)
All delivered in primary, reversed, and monochrome versions. Full source files (AI/EPS).
Aesthetic Direction
Primary reference: Celine, Balenciaga, The Row, Bottega Veneta. Specifically the era of Peter Mulier at Celine — spare, high-conviction typographic logos with no decoration. The confidence to do less. No serifs trying to look friendly. No gradients. No icons trying to explain the business.
The tone we're after: A scalpel, not a kitchen knife. Precision instrument. Clinical without being cold. Expensive without announcing it.
What this is not: Horror film aesthetic. Aggressive gothic lettering. Heavy metal. Anything that makes "knife" feel threatening rather than precise. Not dark academia. Not a steakhouse.
Concept Directions
Present at least two distinct concepts. Suggested territories:
Concept A — The Quiet Cut
Pure typographic wordmark. Clean, extended sans-serif — think Neue Haas Grotesk or similar. "THE KNIFE STUDIO" in spaced caps, uniform weight. The edge is in the restraint. Possibly a hairline rule or single geometric element that references a blade without illustrating one — a fraction of a line beneath or beside the wordmark, razor thin. The mark alone could be a single angled line or minimal geometric abstraction of a blade cross-section. Nothing decorative. Everything intentional.
Concept B — The Incision
A wordmark where the sharpness lives in the letterforms themselves. A single letter — K or N — modified with a cut: a sliced counter, an angled terminal, a letterform that has been precisely edited rather than designed from scratch. The modification is small enough that it reads as refinement, not gimmick. The Studio sits in a lighter weight below. The mark extracts the modified letterform.
EdgeScore Sub-Brand
EdgeScore is the diagnostic tool — it scores a company's positioning across five dimensions and produces a numerical result. The logo should feel like a precision instrument: clinical, data-forward, modern. It should sit within the same family as
The Knife Studio but feel distinct enough to work as a standalone product.
Direction: The word "EDGE" doing more visual work than "SCORE." Possibly a thin geometric score line, a measurement mark, or a minimal gauge element. No dashboard iconography. -No speedometers. Think lab equipment, not SaaS dashboard.
The sub-brand should feel like it could live on a product interface, a report cover, and a white-label assessment equally well.
Typography Notes
-Preferred territory: extended geometric or grotesque sans-serifs. References include Optima (but colder), Helvetica Neue Light, Unica77, PP Neue Montreal. If you use serif, it must be sharp-cut — no soft old-style serifs.
-Avoid: Rounded typefaces, humanist warmth, anything that reads as approachable or friendly. We are not a brand agency.
Colour
-Do not prescribe a palette at this stage — we will develop the full visual identity separately. However, concepts should be presented in black on white and white on black at minimum, so we can assess how they hold at both ends of the contrast range.
-If you have a strong palette instinct, present it as an optional direction — not a core deliverable at this stage.
What to Submit with Your Proposal
-Your portfolio, specifically any wordmark or logotype work (brand agency, tech, fashion, editorial — all relevant)
-2–3 sentences on how you interpret "precision instrument" as a visual brief
-Your process: do you present concepts as sketches first, or refined digital? How many rounds of revision are included?
-Timeline from brief sign-off to first concept presentation
What We're Not Looking For
-Concept packs with 10 directions that haven't been edited
-Anything generated from AI logo tools
-Illustrative marks that try to draw a knife
-Designers whose portfolio skews toward startup friendly / SaaS bubbly aesthetics
I have attached a low level AI generated idea that is sleek but still feels off.
Contract duration of less than 1 month. with 30 hours per week.
Mandatory skills: Logo Design, Corporate Brand Identity