ALCHEMY TATTOO CO..
Concept identity and site for a fictional Kansas City blackwork studio. By appointment only. Walk-ins by exception.
Imagined client: a fine-line and blackwork tattoo artist running a private, by-appointment-only studio in the Crossroads district. Two-person operation. The brief is to convert serious clients (people willing to wait 8 weeks for a custom piece) and politely deter walk-ins looking for flash. Existing studios in the vertical mostly ship dim Wix sites with cluttered Instagram embeds. The opportunity: a site that signals craft and curation before the consult call.
Designer-led. We treated the studio's visual system as if it were the deliverable, then let the website fall out of it. Heavy display serif (Fraunces, italicized) for ceremony. Mono for utility. A two-color palette — coconut-husk near-black on warm cream — broken only by a single oxidized-bronze accent. The portfolio gallery is asymmetric, not grid-locked, because tattoo work doesn't crop into squares well. Sticky "Book Consult" CTA bottom-right because the entire site is a long argument for *one* button click.
A static-shaped concept site demonstrating Nucifera's Salon skeleton at full creative direction. Hero photography sets tone in 2 seconds; gallery proves capability in 30; the booking flow converts the prepared visitor on the next click. Built to validate that the Salon skeleton handles luxury-feeling personal-services brands as confidently as it handles a hair studio.
Aesthetic system.
fig. ii · palette + type- Display
- Fraunces 300 italic
- Body
- Inter 300
- Mono
- JetBrains Mono 400
- Blackwork tradition
- Occult typography
- Riot grrrl zine
- Editorial fashion
- Liturgical layout
Gallery.
fig. iii · 06 frames
Technical notes.
fig. iv- 01 SvelteKit on Vercel; static-rendered for sub-50ms first paint.
- 02 Booking handoff via embedded Cal.com instead of a custom form (real studios this size don't need a CRM).
- 03 Portfolio gallery uses CSS columns with break-inside: avoid for masonry without JS.
- 04 Image strategy assumes hand-curated Studio photography; would commission a half-day shoot for the real version.
- 05 No Google Analytics. Plausible self-hosted on the Care Plan infrastructure.