Independent Studio · Est. 2017 Booking Q2 2025 3 slots left

We craft
strange software
for ambitious teams.

We are a five-person studio designing and shipping digital products that feel different — interaction-heavy dashboards, generative interfaces, and the kind of internal tools your team actually enjoys opening at 9 a.m.

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"A CRM that doesn't make you hate Tuesdays."

Client · Halden Maritime · Java

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Projects declined 2024 · we say no a lot

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Trusted by teams who measure twice

Halden Maritime. Verdant & Co. north_noir() ALDER×FERN Studio e.g. brutalist^™ ~pause~ Halden Maritime.

[01] Selected work

A narrow portfolio, on purpose. We ship four to six engagements a year — each one earns its place here.

Internal CRM 2024

A logistics CRM that turned "double-entry hell" into a single calm screen.

React PostgreSQL tRPC 6 wk engagement

Admin Tools '24

Verdant & Co. — back office for a flower wholesaler, built around the rhythm of auction mornings.

Next.js Prisma

Public Site '23

North Noir — a slow editorial site for a Nordic audio magazine, set in Crimson Pro.

Astro MDX

Pricing Engine 2023 → ongoing

Alder & Fern — a pricing tool that lets a 4-person team run 2,400 SKUs without a spreadsheet.

SvelteKit ClickHouse 3 mo · retained

Want to be case study №05? Tell us

[02] What we do

Three things, done slowly and properly. No retainers, no roadmaps-for-hire.

01

Strategy & discovery

Two weeks. We sit with your team, your customers, and your ugliest internal tab. You leave with a sharp problem statement, a prototype-able scope, and a no-fluff write-up of what we won't build.

2 weeks · fixed

02

Design & prototyping

We skip the 80-frame Figma dump. You get a clickable prototype in week one, refined daily, shipped to staging in week three. Real data, real copy, real edge cases — never lorem ipsum.

3-4 weeks

03

Engineering & launch

Two engineers, one designer in the loop. We ship to your infra on day one — no black box, no throwaway codebase. Pairing sessions with your team twice a week so nothing leaves the building unwritten.

6-12 weeks

Squarely in scope

✓ Internal dashboards, CRMs, admin tools
✓ Public marketing sites with custom CMS
✓ Data-heavy interfaces & pricing engines
✓ Design systems that survive team turnover

Politely declined

— Native mobile apps from scratch
— Full e-commerce migrations
— Long retainers without clear exit
— Anything we wouldn't use ourselves

[03] How we work

Four phases. No surprises on a Tuesday.

01

Dispersed listening

Week 01

We shadow your team for three days. No slide decks, no kickoff theater — just a notebook and the people who'll actually use what we build.

→ stakeholder interviews
→ workflow archaeology
→ problem framing doc

02

Frame & constrain

Week 02

We write a one-page scope with the things we will build, the things we explicitly won't, and the single metric we'll be measured against.

→ scope memo (signed)
→ success metric
→ kill-criteria

03

Build in the open

Weeks 03-08

Daily commits to your repo. Two pairing windows per week. A demo every Friday with real users invited, not just stakeholders.

→ staging from day 03
→ weekly demo ritual
→ shared Linear board

04

Hand-off, gently

Week 10

A 90-min walkthrough, a 12-page runbook, and 30 days of on-call for the code we shipped. Then we leave — no recurring seat to sell.

→ runbook + diagram
→ pair-handover session
→ 30d post-launch window

Principle 01

"Write the docs first. Then the code. Sometimes only the docs."

Principle 02

"If a feature needs a demo video to be understood, it's the wrong feature."

Principle 03

"We name a kill-date on day one. We've kept every one since 2019."

[04] Engagements

Fixed price. Fixed scope. No hourly anxiety.

We don't sell hours. We sell a finished thing, with a date on it. Every engagement below is one number — you'll see it before we start, and the same number on the final invoice.

Schematic

Strategy sprint

from £9k

2 weeks · one fixed fee

For teams that already have engineering but need a sharp outside read on what to build next, and why.

✓ Stakeholder & user interviews (12)
✓ Workflow + data-flow mapping
✓ 1-page problem frame
✓ Buildable scope memo, in priority order
✓ Recorded walkthrough, yours to keep

Start a sprint

Most taken

Groundwork

Design & build

from £38k

8-10 weeks · one fixed fee

The full arc — discovery, design, engineering, hand-off. Most clients land here. One team, one room, one shipped thing.

✓ Everything in Schematic, plus
✓ Clickable prototype from week 01
✓ Full engineering build on your infra
✓ Weekly demos with real users
✓ 12-page runbook & pair hand-over
✓ 30-day post-launch support

Start Groundwork

Atlas

Ongoing partner

from £14k

per month · 3 month minimum

For teams who've shipped with us and want a quiet, low-ceremony relationship — one engineer on call, one designer in weekly orbit.

✓ 1 dedicated engineer, 20 hrs/wk
✓ Weekly design office hours
✓ Quarterly architecture review
✓ Pre-booked, never re-allocated
✓ 90-day exit clause, our side

Book Atlas

All prices in GBP ex. VAT. Half-day money-back on day 03 of any engagement, no questions.

[05] Quiet answers

"Questions that came up twice on calls this year. We wrote them down here so we don't have to keep answering them."

— Iris, partner liaison

01

Why only five people? Couldn't you grow?

We could. We chose not to. Every person we add is a person the client has to meet, brief, and trust. At five, the author of your code is still in the room when you call us on a Thursday. That's the entire point of the studio.

02

What stacks do you actually work in?

Mostly React/Next.js, SvelteKit, Astro on the front; Node, Postgres, Prisma, tRPC, ClickHouse on the back. We'll happily work in your existing stack if it's been cared for — and just as happily tell you, in week one, when it hasn't been.

03

Do you sign NDAs? Work under contract?

Always. We use a mutual NDA template we've refined with our counsel — yours, or ours, the document takes ten minutes to sign. Master Services Agreements and Statement of Work docs are part of every engagement, before any money changes hands.

04

Who owns the code, the design, everything?

You do. Full IP assignment at final invoice, in writing. We keep a non-exclusive right to show the work in our portfolio — minus anything that's genuinely sensitive, which we'll discuss before publishing.

05

Why won't you take retainers without an exit date?

Because we stop being useful. Open-ended retainers drift into ticket-taking. We'd rather finish a thing with you, hand it over well, and come back when there's another thing worth doing. The Atlas tier exists for the in-between — but even it has a 90-day exit.

06

What does "no questions on day 03" actually mean?

If by the end of day three of an engagement you don't think we're the right team, you pay for the days worked and walk. No kill fee, no penalty clause, no awkward call. We've offered it on every engagement since 2019 and been taken up on it exactly twice.

[06] Start something

Tell us about the thing that won't leave you alone.

We read every reply in-house, usually within two working days. If we're not the right fit, we'll tell you who is.

Direct

hello@oblique.studio

Studio

Unit 4, Baird House
15-17 St. John's Lane
London EC1M 4AE

Hours

Mon–Thu · 09:30 → 17:00 GMT
Fri is for the quiet work

Form · ~3 min to fill

All fields required

Your name

Email

Company

Engagement

Schematic

Groundwork

Atlas

Budget range

<£15k

£15-40k

£40-100k

£100k+

The thing that won't leave you alone

0 / min 20 chars

I understand OBLIQUE only takes on ~6 engagements a year and a reply is not a confirmation.

~2 working days to a real reply

We craft strange software for ambitious teams.

A narrow portfolio, on purpose. We ship four to six engagements a year — each one earns its place here.

A logistics CRM that turned "double-entry hell" into a single calm screen.

Verdant & Co. — back office for a flower wholesaler, built around the rhythm of auction mornings.

North Noir — a slow editorial site for a Nordic audio magazine, set in Crimson Pro.

Alder & Fern — a pricing tool that lets a 4-person team run 2,400 SKUs without a spreadsheet.

Three things, done slowly and properly. No retainers, no roadmaps-for-hire.

Strategy & discovery

Design & prototyping

Engineering & launch

Four phases. No surprises on a Tuesday.

Dispersed listening

Frame & constrain

Build in the open

Hand-off, gently

"Write the docs first. Then the code. Sometimes only the docs."

"If a feature needs a demo video to be understood, it's the wrong feature."

"We name a kill-date on day one. We've kept every one since 2019."

Fixed price. Fixed scope. No hourly anxiety.

Schematic

Groundwork

Atlas

Why only five people? Couldn't you grow?

What stacks do you actually work in?

Do you sign NDAs? Work under contract?

Who owns the code, the design, everything?

Why won't you take retainers without an exit date?

What does "no questions on day 03" actually mean?

Tell us about the thing that won't leave you alone.

We craft
strange software
for ambitious teams.

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OBLIQUE — 数字产品定制研发工作室

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