About Kombu

An engineering mind, a designer's eye.

I'm Ryan Stanikk, a Southampton designer, photographer and web developer. Kombu is the one-person studio I run it all through.

Most people lead with one or the other: the systems-and-frameworks side, or the felt-craft side. I have always run both at once. That is the whole point of Kombu, the foundation that makes everything around it work, like the kombu kelp it is named after.

In practice it means I can hold a whole brand in one head: the photography, the design, the website, the campaign, even the menu pricing. Work most studios split across three or four specialists, kept consistent because it never gets handed around.

And when something is missing, a printer nobody can source, two systems that refuse to talk, a tool that does not exist yet, I tend to go and build it rather than send you off to someone pricey who has never met your brand.