Twelve projects a year. No more, no fewer.
We design the thing that gets printed, not the deck that describes it.
Cutwork is a six-person studio in Providence doing brand identity and packaging — wordmarks, dielines, stock selection, press checks. We turn away work past twelve projects a year so every one gets a partner’s full attention, not an associate’s afternoon.
Work
Six of the twelve, this year.
Marrow Provisions
Full identity + retail packaging for a butcher shop's house-cured line
Loft & Ledger
Wordmark and stationery system for a co-working operator
Salt Cellar Provisions
Packaging dieline and shelf-talker system for a small-batch salt co
North Bend Trailworks
Trail-map wordmark and merch tag system for an outdoor gear shop
Farrow Bindery
Full rebrand for a letterpress and bookbinding shop
Understory Coffee
Bag packaging and dieline for a roaster's retail line
Every project ships a physical proof sheet before final print. We’ve never skipped a press check.
Process
Four stages. Same four, every time.
Brief and stock selection first — we pick paper before we pick fonts, because the stock decides what the ink can actually do. Then a wordmark and mark round, three directions, no more. Then dielines and a physical proof sheet, cut and folded by hand so you’re holding the actual object before we send anything to press. Then a press check — someone from Cutwork stands at the press for the first run of every job over 1,000 units.
800–5,000
Print run range we design for — we don’t do 100,000-unit national retail
Studio
Six people, one bench, no account managers.
Cutwork is Priya Deshmukh (identity), Oren Kessler (packaging structure), Talia Vance (production), and three rotating letterpress apprentices from RISD each semester. There’s no account-manager layer between you and the person cutting your dieline — whoever designs your project answers your emails.
“Cutwork sent us a folded, hand-cut proof of the box before a single unit went to press. We caught a fold-line error that would’ve cost us the whole first run.”
“They picked our stock before they picked our typeface. I’d never seen a studio work in that order, and it’s obviously the right order.”
“Our tag run was only 3,000 units. Most studios we talked to didn’t want a job that small. Cutwork treated it like the only job on the bench that week.”
Contact
Twelve slots a year. Four are open for next year.
Tell us the run size and the stock you’re already considering, if you have one. We’ll tell you honestly if Cutwork is the right shop for it — packaging under 10,000 units and identity work for small manufacturers is what the bench is built for.
Start a project