As a creative, I can’t help but dream up brands and products that I wish existed. This project is no exception and is something I would quickly grab from the shelf if I saw it.

My wife and I started brewing small batches of kombucha at home and quickly fell in love with both the process and the result. I have been brewing beer and baking sourdough for a few years now, so fermenting something else on the counter sounded like a natural next step. It’s also a fairly straightforward process once you understand the basics, and we get to experiment with fun flavours and unique ingredient combinations. Blueberry vanilla is our go-to, but we’ve played around with everything from ginger and pineapple blends that rival some of the store bought brews we’ve tried.

The name Happyblob comes from the mix of our initials, H & B, and the “blob” (a.k.a. the pellicle) that forms across the top of the container during fermentation. If you’ve never seen one, it looks a bit like a thick fried egg and has the texture of a very chewy candy. Yes, you can eat it. Yes, I’ve tried it. And no—it’s definitely not a go-to snack or anything, but it’s a fascinating (somewhat gross) part of the process.

All that aside, over the past decade plus of designing, I’ve noticed a clear trend: founders like to see their kind of product in a designer’s portfolio. Coffee founders want to see coffee brands. Brewery founders want to see beer brands. Kombucha founders want to see kombucha brands. And it makes sense—it reassures them, shows shared passion, and helps them feel confident that I can handle their project with care.

So while Happyblob started as a fun spinoff of a hobby, it also gave me the chance to design a playful, modern brand that reflects the joy of fermentation. In the end, it might just be the project that resonates with a future client and opens the door to the kind of work I’d love to keep doing.