Benchmade Knife Company
AXIS® Lock Branding

A patented Benchmade Knife Company exclusive, the AXIS® lock has been turning heads and winning fans ever since its introduction back in 1998. A completely ambidextrous design, the AXIS® lock gets its function from a small, hardened steel bar that rides forward and back in a slot machined into both steel liners of a knife’s handle. Two omega-style springs, one on each liner, give the locking bar its inertia to engage the knife tang. As a result, the tang is wedged solidly between a sizable stop pin and the AXIS® lock bar itself.

The AXIS® lock was first used on the Benchmade 710 in 1998 and went unbranded, other than the name AXIS®, until 2005. I was solely tasked with developing an ID that complimented the simple, strong, and unique mechanism that is the AXIS® lock. It was the shape of the mechanism itself – specifically the slot machined into the handle, and the hardened steel bar – that became the container for the mark, the custom logotype, and support typography.

19 years later every Benchmade knife, with an AXIS® lock, that leaves the Oregon City, Oregon factory is accompanied by the same logomark and printed card I crafted all those years ago.