A self-initiated rebrand · 2025
Branding
The Before · 2018–2024
The original “S. design” lockup was a placeholder that quietly stuck. A generic agency wordmark, drawn from a template, with no story behind the letterform and no system around it. It worked — but it didn’t say anything about how we actually work with clients.
Primary lockup
Symbol
Compact
The Shift
Sapience — the noun — is wisdom you carry, not wisdom you broadcast. We wanted an identity that read the same way: quiet, human, embedded.
The shape that survived every round was a circle holding two profiles — client facing studio, studio facing client — sharing the negative space between them. It’s the literal picture of how the work happens.
The wordmark resolves to lowercase “sapience” in Manrope — round, even, unhurried. Approachable, companionship, sustainability, smart solutions: the four values it has to carry without saying out loud.
Directions Considered
Two other directions made it to the final round. Both are honest, both work — they just say something different. We kept them in the deck so the chosen one stands against its alternatives, not in isolation.
Direction A · The Bean
Single soft form — quieter, more abstract. Read as wellness more than studio.
Direction B · The Speech
A speech-bubble symbol with a face inside. Felt closer to a chat product than a design studio.
Refinement
The chosen direction went through three rounds: more movement in the curl, a shift toward stripe-like negative space, and finally fillets so it could be machined into wood and metal without losing its profile.
The Identity
Typography
Aa
Manrope · 200–800
One family across display, body, and UI. Manrope’s rounded terminals carry the same warmth as the symbol — even, unhurried, no posture.
Palette
242938
Ink
242E3E
Ink Deep
383E51
Slate
4E5469
Slate Mid
697181
Slate Soft
EDEFF5
Mist
F1F2F4
Cream
FFFFFF
Paper
Identity in the World
Embroidered, machined into wood, stamped on paper, hung on a flag. Each surface tests the identity differently — how it survives at small sizes, how it reads from across a room, how it feels when you can touch it.
“Quiet, human, embedded — the studio we’d been working as for years, finally drawn.”
