London — 51.5287° N, 0.1246° W
Est. 2024
Digital design studio
Oaklane Studio
A design studio working at the intersection of editorial restraint and architectural precision.
Scroll — 01 / 05
Inherited rather than invented.
Almost every problem in graphic design was solved once, well, by someone working with worse tools and better constraints. We would rather inherit that work than perform originality on top of it.
Oaklane makes identities, interfaces and printed matter for organisations that expect to still exist in twenty years. The work is drawn from specification sheets, museum catalogues, production artefacts and the plain conventions of print — not because those things are fashionable, but because they were engineered under constraints that have not gone away.
We are small on purpose. Every project is worked on by the people you meet.
- 01
Brand Identity
Marks, typographic systems, and the written and visual language that holds them together. Built as a system, documented as a manual, handed over whole.
- 02
Digital Product
Interfaces for products that expect to be used daily for years. Structure before surface; the surface is then given the same attention.
- 03
Editorial & Print
Catalogues, reports, monographs, and the specimen work that surrounds them. Set for paper first, because paper is unforgiving.
- 04
Design Systems
Tokens, components, and the documentation that keeps a system honest after the founding team has moved on.
- 05
Type & Lettering
Custom wordmarks, drawn letterforms, and typeface commissioning. Including the kind of drawing that only pays off at one size.
- 06
Art Direction
Photography, motion, and the standards that keep a body of work coherent across the people who will make it.
01Ashgrove PressA publisher’s second centuryIdentity2024
02NorthbankReading a balance sheet in the darkProduct2025
03Institute of Applied MaterialsA museum of things that wear outIdentity2024
04HalvardFurniture that admits its jointsIdentity2023
05QuireAn app for long attentionProduct2025
06TessellateDocumentation as the productSystems2025
- 01
Survey
Measure before drawing
We read everything first — the archive, the competitors, the analytics, the things people say when they are not being asked. A survey is not a discovery workshop. It is the part where we establish what is actually true, and where the constraints really are.
- 02
Drawing
Committed lines, revisable
Direction is set in a small number of complete propositions rather than a wall of options. Each one is drawn far enough to be judged fairly. We would rather show you three finished arguments than twenty sketches.
- 03
Proof
Pulled, corrected, pulled again
The work is put under load — set at real sizes, in real contexts, with real content, on real devices. This is the longest stage and the one clients are least prepared for. It is also the one that decides whether the work survives contact with the world.
- 04
Delivery
Handed over whole
Files, systems, documentation, and the reasoning behind the decisions. A handover that assumes we will not be in the room the next time something needs to be decided.
Tell us what you are building, and what it has to outlast.