I built the Smooch brand from the ground up, strategy, identity, wordmark, colour world. The can was the last piece, the moment it finally became something real.

The brief: a packaging system that scales. One hero flavour today, a full range tomorrow, no rebuild required.

First problem, the logo. Smooch's bold wordmark has a curve underneath it that dies at full width on a can, and angling it across felt gimmicky, not confident. So I turned it vertical instead, running the full height, full scale.

Colour had to carry the brand and split the flavours at once. Deep burgundy anchors it, red punches through the wordmark, and each flavour gets its own accent, blush, gold, peach.

No fruit photography. Instead, a graphic starburst holding a simple illustrated fruit, ownable and ready for whatever flavour comes next.

The back label carried ingredients, actives, and every mandatory without losing the premium tone.

Going vertical also quietly solved the shelf problem: cans sit in a fridge door at a slight angle and a horizontal wordmark rotates out of legibility, whereas a full-height one still reads from either side. Curious whether the starburst has a fixed point count across flavours or...

One of the first branding projects of last year. Working on a project from your own culture always hits different. Lusitano Culture Club focuses on bringing tourists lesser-known experiences rooted in Portugal's culture. The main concept was to modernize what is traditionally known and recognizable from the country- in this case, the Lusitano horse and the street tiles- and blend it with a modern take, updated patterns, typography and imagery.

There's something different about designing for your own culture versus a random client brief, you already know what feels authentic versus what feels like a tourist's guess. Between the horse motif and the street tiles, which one gave you more trouble to modernize without losing what makes it recognizable?