Client
MUD\WTR
Project Type
Branding, Web/Product Design
Industry
CPG, Wellness
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MUD\WTR built a category from scratch and raised the standard for premium DTC. We’ve worked with them since day one on brand strategy, e-commerce design, packaging, and more.
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We've collaborated with founder and CEO Shane Heath since the brand launched out of an apartment in Venice Beach: brand, web, art direction, and packaging strategy as the company has grown from a single product into a full line of mushroom drinks sold in Target, Costco, and Sprouts. MUD\WTR has raised $40M to date.
MUD\WTR didn't enter a category. It made one. When Shane started mixing the first batches in Venice Beach, the idea of a coffee alternative built on functional mushrooms and cacao didn't exist on a shelf anywhere. Our co-founders are old friends of Shane's from college, which meant we got to help shape the brand from the very beginning — and have stayed close as it's grown from a one-product startup into a household name in the wellness aisle.
What's stayed constant across every chapter is a single belief: a coffee alternative could be premium. Not crunchy. Not health-store. Premium in the way the best DTC brands are premium — confident in the product, clean in the design, clear in the language. That conviction shaped the brand from launch and has carried it through every evolution since.
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Black and white, from day one
MUD\WTR has owned a black-and-white aesthetic since the beginning, and it's done more work than any color system ever could. The palette signals premium without leaning on luxury cues. It signals transparency — nothing to hide, nothing dressed up. And it signals clarity in a category overrun with neon claims and lifestyle clichés. Holding that line, year after year, is part of how MUD\WTR became unmistakable on a shelf.
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Standardizing the brand for scale
As the brand grew, the system needed to grow with it. We standardized the brand guidelines, codifying the typography, voice, layout principles, and art direction that had emerged organically across the first few years. The goal wasn't to lock the brand down — it was to give the in-house team a foundation flexible enough to move fast without losing the things that made MUD\WTR feel like MUD\WTR.
Web 2.0: from one product to a line
When MUD\WTR expanded from a single SKU into a full line of mushroom-based drinks, the website had to evolve with it. Our creative director George flew to Costa Rica with Shane for a week-long design intensive in the jungle — phones down, whiteboards up, no distractions. What came back was the foundation for the next era of mudwtr.com: a revitalized experience for collections, product listing pages, and product detail pages, built to introduce new products without losing the clarity of the original brand.
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Subscription-first checkout
One of the strategic moves we backed early was making subscription the default checkout path, paired with a single-button checkout flow that strips the funnel down to the fewest possible clicks. It's a bet on confidence: assume the product earns the long-term relationship, then design the experience to make that relationship effortless. The result is a checkout that converts harder than most DTC benchmarks and a customer base built on repeat purchase from day one.
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Art direction
As the brand has scaled, we've directed major campaign shoots that extend the black-and-white system into film, photography, and motion. The art direction holds two tones at once: the editorial confidence of a premium lifestyle brand and the dry, honest humor that's been part of MUD\WTR's voice from the beginning.
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Packaging for the next channel
When MUD\WTR moved into big-box retail — Target, Costco, Sprouts — the packaging had to do new work. We collaborated on packaging rethinks that translated the brand from a DTC unboxing moment into a shelf moment, where a tin has to fight for attention next to legacy CPG giants and win on confidence alone. The black-and-white system held; the details adapted.
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Impact
What started in a Venice Beach apartment is now one of the defining brands of the modern wellness aisle. MUD\WTR has raised $40M, expanded into Target, Costco, and Sprouts, and built a category that didn't exist before they made it. We've stayed on as design advisors as the company has grown — a relationship that started before the brand had a name and continues nearly a decade in.
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