Studio Stoked

Tomorrow is my last day. Back after seeing the Grand Lord of Gothic Darkness, Nicholas Edward Cave, in P**a.

Will I be switching off? No.
Will I be relaxing? Also no.
Will I enjoy hiking to some idyllic cove like a woman with her life together? Also, resoundingly, no.

What I will be doing is listed above. Studio Stoked officially reopens after Vela Gospa, 15th of August.

Got a project brewing? Send that email now while I'm still capable of ignoring it. I have boundary issues and wifi in Hvar, so I probably will check it anyway, but let's both pretend I won't.

Also I lied. More like 6th coffee.

Templates are the easy part. Anyone can make something pretty in Canva.

What you can't Canva your way into is a system your client will actually use, because if it needs a YouTube tutorial, it's not getting posted, it's getting abandoned in a folder by week two.

So here's what actually happened with Junie's social templates. Not just brand-accurate design (though yes, obviously).

A system built for someone who's running a business, not curating a mood board.

Because followers don't buy anything. I don't care how big the number is, everyone's watching, nobody's checking out. What I care about is whether your site's actually set up to convert the people who do click through.

Alt text done? Writing for SEO? Store links live and easy to find? No? Then the templates are the last item on the list, not the first.

A rebrand doesn't fix an invisible site. It just makes the invisible site look nicer while it stays invisible. There's work underneath the pretty part, and that's the part most people skip.

If you want to know what that work actually looks like for your brand, that's not a comment section conversation. Book a call. And when I say call, I mean you fall in love a little and hire me to fix your s**t.

Let me introduce you to London-based, occasion-wear, and dressed head to toe in the kind of confidence most people need three glasses of wine to fake.

Here's what Junie is not: another soft, blush-pink, "she's a girl who loves brunch" brand pretending main character energy is a personality trait. Junie's customer isn't precious. She's the one who turns up to the wedding, the gallery opening, the birthday dinner that got "a bit much" by 9pm, and she owns the room without trying too hard, because trying too hard is for people who aren't sure of themselves yet.

That zebra print isn't decoration. It's the whole point. Wild, a little untamed, unmistakably itself from across the room, the same way she is. You clock a Junie box before you clock the label.

And the wordmark, that custom type, all sharp serifs and quiet drama, sitting in red like it means it. It doesn't whisper "premium." It just is. No hashtag needed, no explaining required. That's the difference between a logo you design and a logo you commit to.
This is the bit of branding work I get genuinely smug about. Not because it's clever for clever's sake, but because every element earns its place. Nothing's there because it looked nice in a mood board. It's there because it tells you exactly who she is before she's said a word.

Volume 2 of the packaging crimes I see most, committed by good founders with good products and bad advice. None of these mean your idea is broken. They mean your packaging is quietly undermining it, on the shelf, in the hand, and in the fridge.
I do CPG branding and packaging, one client at a time, strategy first, so the label tells the truth about how good the product actually is.
Confession booth's open in the comments: which one's yours?

Save it. Send it to the founder who needs it more than you do. Form's in the bio when you're ready to turn yourself in.

No matter how much I love a mark, if it's not right for the founder, it goes in the bin. This one's lovely. She wasn't right. So she lives here instead.
Meanwhile, on the actual desk this week: final files shipping off to a fashion brand, packaging updates for one client, final approved packaging for another absolute goat, and a skincare range just signed off. Lots to show come autumn.
Looks overbooked. Isn't. I run one project at a time and a tight ship, which is exactly how it all keeps moving while I wait on regulatory copy and feedback. Next week is proofs and prints before the summer holiday.
Oh, and a new client signed: olive oil skincare. Talk about manifesting the dream ones. Autumn's looking gorgeous.

None of this is a heart transplant. I know that. Nobody dies if the grey is slightly off. And yet I will treat it like a life is on the line, because somewhere along the way I decided that caring this much is the whole point. I make things stressful. It's a feature.

Anyway. If you'd like this energy aimed at your packaging, I'm booking from September. One project at a time, because I can only panic about one grey at a time. Link in bio.

An A to Z of the packaging crimes I see most, committed by good founders with good products and bad advice. None of these mean your idea is wrong. They mean your shelf is lying about how good you are.

I do CPG branding and packaging, one client at a time, strategy first, so the label is built for the stranger buying it instead of the founder who loves it.

Go on then, which one's yours? No judgement, I've cleaned up every one of these for someone, so nothing surprises me anymore.

Save it. Send it to the founder who needs it. Form's in the bio when the shame wears off.

Behind the scenes of a good week, before I ruin it by working through the weekend.

Five inquiries off the site. Two discovery calls. A strategy session with a returning client where the logo idea showed up fully formed and uninvited, which after 17 years I've learned not to question.

The honest bit: the SEO work that did this was done last December. Six months ago. It sat there doing nothing while I assumed I'd wasted my time, and then this week the inbox started behaving. Nobody tells founders this. The work doesn't pay you back when you want it to. It pays you back whenever it feels like it.
Anyway. Pebble beach, a hat that says no drama, and a child who's about to learn what a water pistol ambush feels like.
Switching off is a skill. I'm bad at it. Working on it.

Not every idea is a good idea. Exhibit A: me, attempting to pose and catch a tea tin in the same moment. Two motor functions, one body, no chance.

Swipe to watch it go exactly as well as my face suggests it will.
I'm in that part of the year where everything's nearly done. Finishing things off, waiting on feedback, sitting on launches I can't show you yet.
So while we wait, here's photographic proof that I can build a brand from strategy up but cannot, under any circumstances, catch a tin.
New work incoming. The hand-eye coordination is not.

Booking new projects after my summer hols.

People ask what a good month in business looks like. They want a number.
Wrong metric.

A good month is reaching the end of it without a menty b. That's the KPI.

Here's the June I just had.

Genero update, shipped.

A kid at the beach morning and arvo every day, with a solid seven hours of screen time wedged in between, because it's summer hols for him and very much not for me yet.

Mum's place, because it takes a village and this village is spitting distance from the water. I sleep better knowing he's been in the sea twice by dinner.

The first raspberries off the canes my dad planted. He's gone, but they turn up every summer anyway.

That sea view, which nearly justifies the 150 mosquito bites currently decorating my face. Nearly.

Trent Dalton, because why read something relaxing when you can weep on the last page instead.

Introducing the kiddo to Morris Gleitzman, an Aussie classic and a rite of passage. Get in early.
One selfie from A Perfect Circle. The only photo I have, because Maynard stops singing the second he clocks someone filming. If you know, you know.

And Keanu meeting the two orange brothers I spent last summer rescuing and then guilting Mum into adopting. She said no in two languages. They live here now.
That's the month. Full life, studio still standing, brain intact.

I run one project at a time. Not because I can't juggle more. Because all of the above is the thing I'm actually protecting.