Chef Michael Pusnik came to us with a category most people meet at a supplement counter — functional mushrooms — and the ambition to sell it as luxury. We built the whole company from scratch: the name Kybē, the identity, the product and packaging language, and the store it sells through.
Functional mushrooms already had a look — earth tones, apothecary jars, supplement-aisle seriousness. Kybē wanted none of it. The brief was to make a functional-mushroom chocolate feel like something you'd give, not something you'd dose.
What it didn't have: a name, a face, a package, or a place to buy it. There was a chef, a conviction, and a category nobody had treated as luxury before.
So we answered it the way you'd answer a product brief — build the whole company, not just a logo.
There was no existing mark to extend and no category playbook to borrow. So we ran a full 0→1 build — name, world, product, store — and let each stage set up the next.
A luxury brand starts at its name. We searched for something short, ownable, and free of supplement-aisle cliché — landing on Kybē, a word with no baggage that could carry both the wellness and the indulgence sides of the product at once.
Logo, typography, color, and a custom illustration style — built so the first impression is fine chocolate, with the functional story revealed on a closer read. The note we kept returning to: mind-expanding, not medicinal.
We developed the product and packaging language — structure, finish, and a 3D-rendered product world — so a bar on a shelf signals gift before it signals supplement, and holds up next to fine confectionery rather than next to capsules.
On top of the identity we designed and built the e-commerce experience — UI/UX, web design, and development — so Kybē could sell directly, tell its own story, and scale beyond Los Angeles without losing the brand.
Naming through storefront, delivered as a single coherent system the founder could run and extend — a luxury house with room for new products under one world, rather than a one-off launch.
Every design decision had to hold two ideas at once. These are the tensions the brand was built to resolve.
Make a supplement-category product feel like a gift — without hiding what it actually does.
Chocolate you crave that still earns the word "functional" — neither half apologizing for the other.
Lean into "mind-expanding" as positioning while staying credible, fair-trade, and grown-up.
Born in Los Angeles, designed from day one to travel across the US under one brand.
Mind-expanding mushrooms and chocolates.— Kybē, on what it makes
A single 0→1 build, grouped into three deliverable tracks — everything a company needs to exist and to sell.
Kybē — short, ownable, and free of supplement-aisle cliché — for a chef who started with only an idea and a conviction.
Logo, type, color, and illustration that read fine chocolate first and function second — consistent everywhere it appears.
Packaging and a 3D-rendered product world built so a bar reads as a gift, not a dose — at home next to fine confectionery.
An e-commerce experience, designed and developed end to end, ready to take orders and tell the brand's story beyond Los Angeles.
Functional mushrooms positioned as "mind-expanding" luxury — not wellness-aisle utility. A different shelf entirely.
A luxury, fair-trade, sustainable brand built as a house, not a single launch — established in Los Angeles and designed to extend across the US as a category leader.
