Chloe Ford
Designer for Beauty Brands / Founder of Studio Plush
United Kingdom
Q What do you do?
“I’m a designer for beauty and wellness brands - mainly for e-commerce. I help brand owners launch or elevate their business through beautifully and strategically designed branding, packaging and websites.”
I love working with both totally new startups who need designs to get started, and established businesses who are ready for a rebrand so they can scale.
I also co-founded Luna Templates. We sell customizable section templates for Shopify and we have a Shopify course for designers.
Q What steps did you take to get to where you are now?
I did a creative foundation course and then a degree in Graphic Design back in 2012. The degree gave me a solid foundation in the fundamentals of design, and techniques for idea generation.
I then worked in-house for brands and at a few design agencies, but I never felt like I was doing the work I was really passionate about. So I started my design business in 2019 and never looked back! I love working 1:1 with clients and being part of their journey.
After working with many e-commerce brands on Shopify, I decided to share my web design knowledge with other designers through Luna Templates.
Q How do you stand out in your field?
We’ve been told by our clients that our style is ‘elevated playfulness’. We love to inject a bit of fun into our work, but always making sure that it looks premium and high quality. Focusing only on beauty and wellness clients means we speak their language and know what works in that industry. It means we can go even deeper into the strategy because we already ‘get’ their market and know what their competitors are doing.
I place a lot of importance on the experience we give our clients. I know it can be nerve wracking investing in someone else’s skills, so we put a lot of importance on being reliable and making the experience fun and stress free.
Q What are you working on right now?
We’ve recently finished working on celebrity make up artist Katie Jane Hughes’ new make up line. We did the full service for them including strategy, brand identity, packaging and a Shopify website.
We’re currently working on some assets for Homebody, a client we rebranded last year who has experienced massive growth with their CBD bath soak product. They completely sold out on their website and are now stocked in every Ulta store in the USA - we couldn’t be happier for them!
Other projects include branding and web for a lash and brow artist, and more personally I’m working on incorporating AI into my workflow for visual concepts.
Q What’s your style?
My style and tastes change constantly - I feel that’s part of being a designer and why I love getting to work on so many different brands. For Luna we’re constantly creating fictional brands to showcase our section templates, which is super fun.
Our recent project with Homebody accurately represents one side our style, it’s playful but refined, colourful but still calm and the website is super interactive.
On the other side is Mossy, which also represents our style! It’s editorial, striking, muted and retro feeling.
Q Out of all your slashies, which one do you wish you could do more often?
I feel lucky that I get to put lots of skills into use in my role, so I would probably say something off screen, and just for fun because I don’t do that enough. I used to enjoy painting and loom weaving during the pandemic - I need to make time for hobbies again!
Q What is frustrating you right now?
Lack of time! There are just so many ideas and things I want to work on, but I also feel frustrated when I feel like I don’t have enough time to do them. So I’m currently focusing on putting space into my business, reducing stress and delegating. I read a book called ‘Make Time’ and it totally changed the way I approach my day. Although having my son in 2022 flipped all that on its head and time took on another dimension! I now realise it’s all about priorities - usually we can make time for things if we prioritise them.
Q If you could hire someone for $20/hour, what would you have them do to make your day easier?
A wardrobe stylist, I spend way too long deciding what to wear. Or a personal chef, I can’t decide!
Q What do you wish you could have told yourself, when, and why?
That not liking my work is a good thing because it means I have taste. I can look at my work objectively and never deliver anything to a client that I don’t think is spot on. I used to hate all the work I did when I first started out - I remember crying after my degree show because I thought my work was so rubbish. But I ended up being one of only about 5 of us who got picked for a job based off of it! So clearly - one - it wasn’t rubbish. And – two - I kept going and now I’m proud of the work I do. So I would tell myself to be more positive about it, get my head down and keep going because it gets so much easier.
Q If you could talk to an expert to gain more insight on something, what would it be about?
Business development and how to scale but without stress or overwhelm. A happy and stress free life is so important to me, but a successful business with happy clients and customers is too!
Q What kind of opportunities/projects are you looking for?
We thrive on custom projects where we start with in-depth strategy workshops and roll out a brand across all their touchpoints from a concept and into stores.
But we also love design intensives or VIP days at the moment. We get a lot done in a very short space of time and I love the collaboration that happens with the client. We can get branding or packaging done in a day, and Shopify website in just a week. It’s a great lower budget option for brands who need to get started making sales, but don’t want to sacrifice on quality.
We work with all kinds of beauty clients who need designs for their e-commerce products in skincare, wellness, cosmetics, haircare, fragrance, sunscreen, candles etc.
Q Describe your ideal job/client/collaboration.
A brand who have DIY’d their designs so far and have made good sales but are hitting some roadblocks. Their current identity isn’t representing the quality or personality of the brand, they want to see big growth in the next year and need strategic designs to help them do that. I love digging into the strategy with brands who know their customers super well, but are unsure how to execute a brand that speaks directly to them.
Q What is your rate?
Intensives/VIP days start at £1500 ($1900). Full scope projects start at £6000 ($7600).
Q How should someone approach you about working together?
Just fill in our enquiry form on our website. We’re lucky enough to get a lot of enquiries so when people tell us why we should work with them it gets us excited. Include lots of info about your brand and your goals, and we’ll follow up by scheduling a call if it’s a good fit.
Q Who is a creative you admire?
Beautiful photography - Margaret Emily Studio, No fluff, strategic copy - Katie Ramsingh, Scroll stopping social media - Daisy at The Selfhood
Q Oh! and… how do you stay creative?
Clean desk, travelling, reading, podcasts, analysing other industries, shopping.
This member profile was originally published in May 2024.