Venue Ink
INTRODUCTION
Venue.ink is a specialized **booking and client‑management platform built exclusively for tattoo artists and studios**. It helps tattoo professionals streamline everything—from intake forms and calendar scheduling to deposits, client chat, flash art uploads, reminders, and full payments. Think of Venue as your personal tattoo booking assistant (without needing to hire one.) We help make booking, scheduling, taking deposits, and having conversations with your clients easy.
Year: 2024
Role: Product Designer
Timeline: 12 weeks
Responsibilities: UX Design, Research, UI Development, Stakeholder Management
Product Design
Mobile App
Web App
Current Website
OVERVIEW
Venue Ink
Venue is for tattoo artists who manage their own booking and want to consolidate all their booking, scheduling, deposits, and client conversations in one place to make booking painless and stress-free.
This project explores the design of a streamlined booking and client management system for tattoo artists. The goal was to replace the fragmented, multi-app workflow with a single, intuitive platform—empowering artists to focus more on their craft and less on admin.
As a product designer, I set out to streamline this workflow by designing a centralized, end-to-end booking experience that balances business needs (reducing admin overhead, securing deposits) with client needs (ease, trust, and clear communication). The goal was to create a system that feels tailored, efficient, and intuitive—without losing the human, personal touch that defines the tattoo industry.
The Problem
Independent tattoo artists often rely on a patchwork of tools—Instagram DMs, spreadsheets, and third-party payment apps—to manage bookings, client intake, and flash sales. This fragmented experience not only increases the risk of missed opportunities and no-shows but also creates friction for clients and takes valuable time away from the artist’s creative work
Goals and Constraints
Goals
Reduce no-show rates by requiring deposit.
Centralize bookings, messages, and flash in one dashboard
Offer a frictionless experience for both first-time and returning clients
Constraints
Many users are non-tech-savvy
Workflow should work both on desktop and mobile devices
Artist must be able to express their branding and personal style
RESEARCH
User Painpoints
To validate the problem, I conducted user interviews to uncover tattoo artists painpoints on their current workflows and the platforms they use. The findings are as follows.
Difficulty organizing and displaying flash are. Flash pieces are often posted through instagram stories and post and recompiled in flash highlights where it’s hard to manage flashes since Instagram displays highlights the oldest by default and this couldn’t be changed.
Manual booking, back and forth scheduling. Artists waste hours replying to booking requests and trying to find open dates manually.
Scattered client communication. Artists often juggle messages across Instagram, Facebook, text, and email. It’s easy to lose track of conversations, references, or booking details.
Incomplete and inconsistent intake info. Some clients forget to include key details like budget, body placement, or references—leading to delays or confusion.
No-Show clients after booking. Clients often flake on appointments or don’t pay a deposit, leaving the artist with an empty time slot and no income.
Manual payment tracking and tip chasing. Accepting payments across e-transfer, cash, Venmo, etc., gets messy. Tips get forgotten. Sales tracking is a nightmare.
FINAL DESIGN SOLUTIONS
Flash gallery management lets artists upload, price, mark as sold, and accept bookings directly on flash pieces with just a click.
Self serve booking lets clients pick up a flash design and reserve it. It also asks intake questions such as price, size, placement and personal information like name and instagram handle for communication.
Customizable client chat and review request. Centralized client messaging inside the platform. Every conversation is tied to a booking or form, reducing friction, lost of information and keeping everything in one place.
A personalized booking link and a fully customizable booking page and custom pages.
Payment features – Deposit collection which allows customers to set custom deposit amounts. This feature also notifies customers through sms and email to nudge them. The app also features integrated payments through Stripe, Google pay, Apple pay, Interac, Klarna and Afterpay. Artists can track what’s been paid, pending, and refunded through the dashboard.
RESULTS
Outcomes
Venue has come along way since launch.
150K
Tattoos booked on Venue
$5M+
Artist earned on venue
4.6 Starts
Rating in App Store
RETROSPECTIVES
Learnings
What Went Well
User research grounded the work. Talking to real artists gave me insights I wouldn’t have uncovered through assumptions alone—especially around flash management, client communication fatigue, and ghosting.
Lean, focused design decisions. By prioritizing must-haves (booking, deposits, flash), I avoided scope creep and delivered a solution that felt both powerful and usable.
Empathy drove experience design. I designed for clients who might be nervous or inexperienced, and for artists juggling art, admin, and mental energy.
What I’d Improve Next Time
Form flexibility. One user pain point was the inability to edit their own intake forms in some platforms. In future iterations, I’d explore a no-code form builder to give artists more autonomy.
Client-side friction.Some platforms caused client drop-off due to slow-loading forms or required too many steps. I’d love to prototype a booking experience that feels more like a two-tap checkout.
Flash discoverability. Booking flash directly from a gallery worked well, but artists wanted better tools for managing availability, exclusivity, and pricing tiers.
What I’d Explore Next
Client account experience. Can clients track their previous sessions, rebook, or view saved flash?
AI-assisted admin. Could a tool suggest time slots based on tattoo size, or auto-fill forms based on prior clients?
Analytics for artists. Adding a simple dashboard to show earnings, session trends, and flash performance would give tattooers valuable business insights.