Deep Attention, Creative Excellence: Kapono Chung, Partner at Combo on the Design Next podcast
19 May 2026
Ten years ago, Kapono Chung almost became a boy band member. Spoiler alert: he didn’t. Sorry. What he did instead was build Combo, a New York-based branding studio founded on the belief that the best brands are built from the inside out.
Their great success has come from this approach, with key clients having a sense of shared ownership for what’s being created – the smartest, business-defining take on radical collaboration we’ve heard about. More on that later.
“It's because everyone owned it and everyone felt like they rebranded themselves.”
— Kapono Chung
Partner, Combo
Sitting down with Kapono to discuss our season topic of creative excellence, I was struck by the clarity around his agency. A lot of the inspiration for that comes from his father, a pioneering designer in Korea in the late 80s, who taught him from a young age that creativity is an exciting and viable career choice.
What does Kapono consider the foundation of creative excellence? Deep attention. His studio is founded on this. The willingness to keep pushing even when the work is already good.
“Creative excellence means deep attention to whatever it is that you're creating: rigour, detail, thinking about it over and over again.”
It’s like charging a battery: you can get to 80% quickly, but that last 20% is where the resistance kicks in. Many people stop there. The ones who don’t are the ones producing excellent work.
“You can get to a really good place really quickly. But it’s the last 5-10% that is really hard. And that’s when it really starts to get excellent.”
It’s a discipline that runs through the way Combo operates. Exploration phases are protected and time is treated as a creative asset.
Listen on Apple Podcasts
Season 3, Episode 8
Tune in on Spotify
Season 3, Episode 8
Jump off the boat
We spoke about the courage required to make something truly different… He describes it as jumping off a ship. The ship is every logo, every brand, every reference you’ve seen and case study you’ve perused.
“You have to jump off the ship. You have to start swimming towards something else. But it's totally an abyss... you don't know what's out there.”
This speaks to his approach to really pushing yourself. Reject the pull to turn back when work gets uncomfortable. The same goes for his team culture: “If they don’t feel uncomfortable by the work they’re creating, they’re not there yet.”
A studio built differently from the start
The Away origin story, and what it cost
You’ve definitely seen Combo case studies on moodboard across the industry – starting with a splash; their first major client was Away, the luggage brand.
Kapono agreed to take the project at half his quoted price, but only if he could design everything. Product, brand, social, email, the whole picture. Doesn’t that sound like the opposite of commercial thinking? Not in this case – the case study is so rich that it propelled his business, launching Combo’s reputation.
“I wasn't worried about being taken advantage of. I wanted to do the work. I wanted to build something I had full ownership over.”
Designers are thinkers first
Kapono’s excitement about AI gives us heart; he hopes it will free designers to be what he’s always believed they are: thinkers.
“Designers are just thinkers. They have to think first before they design.”
Creativity, Kapono believes, is about to get significantly better. Bring it on.
