How LULACREATES designed baby skincare brand Smoosh to look at home on a beauty shelf

The baby care aisle isn't somewhere I've ever needed to walk down, but if I do stumble onto it, I tend to find one of two things: heritage clinical brands that look like medicine, or cartoon-led products drowning in bright colours and nauseating characters. Mercifully, Smoosh, a new premium baby skincare brand, does neither, thanks to female-led studio LULACREATES.

Founded by Sophie and Victoria, both former Boots and babycare specialists, Smoosh launches with naturally derived, sensitive-skin formulations and a digital-first approach to branding and community. LULACREATES handled the full identity: logo, packaging system, brand guidelines and the visual language to set Smoosh up as a serious challenger.

Founder Louise O'Kane says it came down to spotting a genuine gap. "Modern parents are more ingredient-conscious than ever," she says. "They'll spend hours researching formulations, reading reviews and investing in products that genuinely work, but visually, the category hasn't evolved at the same pace."

Design as a trust signal

When Louise looked properly at the category, she found the same divide I had: clinical heritage brands that look like medicine, and bright, child-led ranges built around characters and colour. Both earn a parent's trust, just from opposite ends. What almost nobody was doing was treating baby skincare as something you'd actively want on display.

Smoosh's answer is a soft, fluid identity that still feels at home in the aisle. The custom-drawn logo pairs rounded lowercase type with a floating 'o', a nod to bubbles, movement and the softness of baby skin, while organic curves and gentle distortions keep things light and leave room for motion and digital work down the line.

Working within tight production limits – a controlled palette and few print colours – Louise built the system around an ochre-yellow accent and softer complementary tones, changing the packaging colour from product to product so parents can grab the right bottle in the middle of bath time.

Look at it as a whole, and the references are clearly premium skincare and beauty: products that have to feel both trustworthy and desirable. "Consumers are becoming hyper-aware of ingredients and formulations, so aesthetic value needs to also signal trust," Louise explains. "We wanted to create something worthy of a beautifully curated bathroom shelf while still feeling authentic to the realities of parenthood."

Built for the feeds

Social mattered from the start. As a digital-first business, Smoosh needed an identity that could work on shelves and in the feeds of creators, parents, and online communities.

"There are very few baby skincare brands that feel native to today's digital culture," says Louise. "This had to be tactile, shareable and instantly recognisable online as well as in retail."

And it seems to be working. Since launch, Smoosh has pulled in real influencer attention and retailer interest, with conversations already underway with major stockists. A nice reminder that as more female-founded challengers move into these settled categories, the right branding can carve out room for something that actually feels different.