Work / Valentine Tide
Case study · Brand site and storefront
Valentine Tide: surf the shadows.
Valentine Tide is a goth and punk surf apparel label in the Graysmith Labs portfolio. The goal: a site that feels as dark and heavy as the clothes, and a shop that fulfills itself.
The identity
Blackletter, bone, and blood.
The brand lives somewhere between a surf shop and a record store after midnight. The site leans all the way in: a blackletter wordmark set in Pirata One, clean Inter for everything you need to read, and a palette of just three colors.
A faint repeating wordmark sits behind the hero like a watermark, so the page feels textured without a single photograph.
The build
A shop that runs itself.
No inventory, no packing, no platform fees beyond payment processing.
- Catalog driven shop. Products, sizes, and prices live in one small catalog file, so adding a drop is an edit, not a redesign.
- Stripe Checkout. Payment happens on Stripe's hosted checkout, with shipping rates and a free shipping threshold built in.
- Automatic fulfillment. A Stripe webhook on a Cloudflare Worker is built to place the matching Printful order, so each tee is printed and shipped without anyone touching it.
- Email capture. A "Join the cult" signup with accessible validation and screen reader announcements.
- Fast and simple. Plain HTML, CSS, and JavaScript with no framework or build step, hosted on a custom domain.
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