Case study

Smoothies — DTC skincare

A homepage concept for the wrinkle-patch brand: the product is the shelf, and the layout follows it.

Unsolicited concept. Not affiliated with, or commissioned by, Smoothies.
Redesigned Smoothies homepage: 'Embrace the Smooth Life' beside the five product cartons fanned out.
01 · The palette was already shipped

Nothing here to invent

The brand's wordmark runs pink to peach to green to blue to lilac — and its five cartons match it, one hue per patch shape. So the page's palette was sampled pixel by pixel from the client's own artwork; there was nothing here to invent. Each patch variety gets a band of its carton's color, and the wordmark and cartons appear untouched, at native resolution.

02 · Hierarchy

By zone of the face, not by price

The page opens with a drawn map of the four places a face creases, and sends each one to the patch shape cut for it. Product copy uses the client's own terminology for the material — the difference between a page about your product and a page about a category — and wear-time claims match the client's own instructions page, because a homepage and an instructions page that disagree is how returns start.

03 · The faces

A page that argues for its own product

Each of the five color bands carries a woman of a different decade, thirties through sixties — deliberately. The product is for faces that move, and a page that only shows unlined thirty-year-olds argues against itself.

04 · Typography

Chosen by elimination, in writing

Display is Gabarito 700 — it echoes the roundness of the client's logo without imitating it — over Instrument Sans for body. The rejections carry the reasoning: Fraunces and Instrument Serif read as another sector's voice; Playfair Display is a template reflex; Poppins and Nunito flatten the brand to generic DTC; Inter is everyone's default. A face earns its place by surviving the elimination, not by being liked.

05 · Standards

Measured against the painted background

Every word was measured against the color behind it: all 132 blocks of text on the page pass AA, the worst at 5.0 to 1. Scroll reveals run on IntersectionObserver — never a scroll listener — and respect reduced-motion. The mobile menu closes from the keyboard. The layout holds to 320 px, and the main call to action was verified inside the fold on four viewports.