To solidify the philosophy, I drafted a manifesto that everything in our world obeys.

Before a product, a brand, or even a name, this started as one existential thought: we're all going to die.

So how do we make the most of the insane opportunity of being alive?

After traveling to the far corners of the globe, I noticed something. Most people let life happen to them — and there's never been a time in history more conducive to being mindless. But some rare souls go all in with an obsessive intentionality toward the time they are given.

There are only three categories that time well spent can fall into:

Presence — Appreciating the little things. Purely enjoying the now.
Progress — Working toward a dream. Building a better version of yourself.
Both — Rare moments of true flow, when the two move as one.

Most brands and people build their world around one of the first two. But this subculture goes all in on all 3.

Deciding on a name for a brand built on a specific way of approaching life and time was no simple process. So where do you start? Guiding principles, which for me were:

1. Has to feel bigger than a brand. Something to be a part of.
2. Has to allude to intentionality and time, but not necessarily explicitly.
3. Has to look and sound beautiful, unique, and ownable.

After falling flat with hundreds of words and word combos across multiple languages (Jord, Opus, Terra), I got creative. Only a metaphor could represent our world:

You're an arrangement of carbon and oxygen, floating in an infinite universe, that beat impossible odds to become alive on planet Earth.

The Carbn Project — an opportunity to take these meaningless elements and create something extraordinary.

This brand romanticizes the human experience through the lens of reality.

Our world is rich, beautiful, and wondrous — and uneven, organic, and unfinished. So the design system is too.

There's a heavy trend toward analog right now, and we sit next to it without being it. Analog is part of the picture, not the whole one. The real principle is physical artifact — things you can feel. A camera with a screen isn't analog, but it's a tangible element someone in our world interacts with, so it belongs.

Instagram is the entry into our living, breathing world.

Goals. Make the identity of the brand unmistakable. Make people feel part of something rather than marketed to. Make an early stage brand feel as considered as one with a decade behind it.

Strategy. Treat the channel as the place people come to understand and identify with a philosophy. Product appears as evidence of the idea rather than the subject of the feed. A high volume of highly intentional content across a five-pillar system, united by central beliefs: content should bring the viewer into our physical world, build an honest relationship, and leave them feeling like it was a worthwhile use of time.

Execution. Two shoots with friends. Sixty-plus posts. Concepts planned one to three months out, scripted and edited a week ahead, posted four to five days a week.

The result. A small but deeply engaged community that understood the brand before it had anything to sell.

Email is where the relationship deepens, and where it pays off.

The program is designed to feel more like a friend’s Substack than a brand’s mailing list.

Goals. Drive home the philosophy to someone who’s actively expressed interest. Make the list feel closer to the brand than the general public. Turn community members into buyers.

The offer. The list gets 24 hours of early access to every limited release. Access, not discounts — the brand doesn’t compete on price.

Welcome flow. Three emails: the philosophy, the origin story, and a journal prompt for giving your time more life.

Cadence. One to two sends a month pre-launch, moving to one to two a week now that there’s product to talk about.

Most DTC sites are storefronts. This one is another way to experience the world.

Goals. Make the philosophy unmistakable. Sell without ever breaking the tone.

Structure. Three destinations: Shop, Philosophy, Writing. Two of the three are belief. The homepage is the entry point — the visual world, the product, and the manifesto in full.

Product is present but never the pitch. The homepage headline is the brand line, not an offer. When Volume 01 sold out, the sold-out state stayed visible rather than hidden — absence is evidence.

Design. The identity is built on physical artifact, so the site is too. Paper as surface. The philosophy page isn’t an About page styled to look like a journal; it’s built as one.

The brand, lived by the community.

We curate in-person events because a philosophy about time is best realized by spending it with people who think the same way. No sales. Just an opportunity to feel it.

Event 01 — Pre-launch. Twenty-five people, one morning at Temescal Canyon. Breathwork led by PJ Nestler, director of performance at XPT. A hike, run, or ruck — each person’s choice. At the top, one journal passed around: everyone writes a page with something small they’re grateful for and a crazy dream they’re chasing. Coffee and juice at the bottom.

Presence and progress in a single session.

The result. Sold out in two weeks. 150 pieces. One design, three colorways. Positioning, manifesto, name, identity, site, and every channel — built and shipped by me.