SMOOCH!
SMOOCH! is the all-film wedding studio I co-founded in Los Angeles — and the brand I built for it from zero: name, identity, design system, website, voice, and social strategy.
The Core Idea
The whole brand turns on one contradiction. A serious, archival burgundy — #8B1A1A, the red of studio-era lipstick, oxblood leather, Kodak warmth — rendered in a playful, translucent "jello" logo that wobbles on load. Gravitas and wink in a single mark. That tension is the brand, and every decision after it exists to protect it: elegant but fun, sensual but approachable.
A documented design system.
Every element is specified. A palette with defined usage ratios — burgundy carries every page but never more than ~15% of it — and a full dark-mode logic that deepens into the wine family instead of inverting to black. A four-typeface hierarchy (Playfair Display, Source Serif 4, Inter, JetBrains Mono), each with a fixed role and scale. Dual logo variants mapped to context: dimensional for hero and motion, flat for favicon and email. And a voice guide with sample copy, formatting standards, and a banned-words list that keeps the tone deliberate.
Palette
- Smooch Burgundy carries every page — but never more than ~15% of the surface.
- Lipstick Sheen is interactive only: hover, active links, focus rings.
- Linen replaces pure white; Darkroom Brown replaces black for body text.
- Eucalyptus is a palette-breaker, used at 5% maximum.
- Dark mode deepens into the wine family — backgrounds to Midnight Burgundy, surfaces to Deep Wine #3D0E0E — instead of inverting to black.
Typography
Your wedding on film.
We shoot weddings on film because nothing else feels like this. The warmth of Kodak Portra on skin. The grain you can almost touch.
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Shot on Kodak Portra 400 + 800, CineStill 800T
Logo Variants
- Website hero
- DimensionalExpressive first impression
- Animation / reels
- DimensionalGlossy surface built for motion
- Email · print
- FlatReliable at small sizes
- Favicon
- Kiss markLegible at 32px and below
- Dark mode
- Flat · Lipstick SheenContrast on dark surfaces
Minimum flat size 80px — below that, the kiss-mark only. Clear space equals the height of the “o”. Never stretch, rotate, or recolor outside the approved dark-mode variant.
Positioning
Most wedding brands land on fire-engine red or retreat to safe blush. SMOOCH! takes the empty middle — a burgundy bolder than blush and more sophisticated than cherry — and owns a real competitive vacuum. It's built to photograph as timeless rather than trendy, the same way the film does. The position came out of a real market read.
The Site
Designed and built on Astro and Vercel — the same stack as this portfolio. Film-forward, with a motion logo, a scrolling analog gallery, service architecture, and a contact flow built for booking rather than browsing.
Traction
The test of a brand is whether it converts inquiries into bookings. This one does — its first weddings and engagement sessions came in within the opening season.
Role
Co-founder. Brand identity, design system, website, brand voice, social strategy, and post-production. Amanda and I shoot the work on film.
Built with Claude and Claude Code; positioning developed from AI-assisted market research; graphic assets produced with generative tools and refined to spec. The creative system — palette, type, voice, the contradiction it's built on — is mine.