Ishan Upadhyay, neoteric storyteller

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Every brand has a story. Few reach people whole. Industrial design taught me to respect the *object. Leading teams taught me to curate the *narrative around it. When the tool to tell it doesn't exist, I build the *instrument myself. The work lives where the three meet, as one *experience, for brands and for individuals.

Currently Head of Creative & AI Creative Lab, Uni Cards

Work

A curated selection of narratives for brands and people

Instruments

Tools I build when a story needs a new way to be told

Experiments

Stories without a brief. Images and short films made with generative tools and an industrial designer's eye

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Play

Stories you play with your hands. Five games and one instrument, each opens in place

Kyma

Now building. A sound tool for creators: three modes, a taste engine and a mascot for each mode

The story

Creators lose hours hunting stock music that almost fits. Kyma makes the sound instead, in under twenty seconds, and gives you three ways to ask for it.

Hum it, wish for it, or set the room. Each mode answers a different moment in an edit, and each has its own character, so the product and the brand tell one story.

Hum & BeatBoxMagicAtmosphere Tap a rhythm on the wave

A glimpse of Hum & BeatBox mode: tap a rhythm for four seconds and it comes back as a loop. The real tool listens to your voice.

Mode 01

Hum & BeatBox

Hum a melody or beatbox a beat. Kyma turns your voice into notes on a track, then plays them back as a cello, a choir or an 808 kit.

MascotCuethe monkey

Quick, rhythmic and a born mimic. Cue repeats what he hears, then makes it better.

Mode 02

Magic

Pick a genre and a mood, or describe the moment: a rainy study night, a car edit. Kyma deals the starting patches, then makes a full track at the length you choose.

MascotWooferthe golden retriever

Eager and reliable. Ask once, and Woofer fetches exactly what you wanted.

Mode 03

Atmosphere

A mixer of living layers: drone, wind, rain, birds, city, water. Start from a scene such as Rooftop dusk or Temple courtyard, let it evolve, then lay it under the song.

MascotLothe cow

Slow, low and unhurried. Lo is the hum of a place you want to stay in.

Engine 04

Taste engine

Teach Kyma your taste. Drop in a few tracks and a learning agent reads their brightness, density, groove and energy, then saves a taste file for any project. It keeps the numbers and the credits, not the audio.

Mascot strategy

Every mode has a face. Cue, Woofer and Lo lead Kyma's outreach and its product conversations, so a creator meets a character before a feature. The mascot tells you which mode you are in and what kind of help to expect.

The tool

Pick a mode. Hum & BeatBox, Magic or Atmosphere.
Kyma composes. An original soundtrack or sound effect, made for the moment, not pulled from a shelf.
Under twenty seconds. Sound in hand, with no stock library to dig through.

Visit Kyma^↗Open the tool^↗

My part

Brand, narrative, mascot strategy and the tool itself.

About

A storyteller first. Industrial designer, creative director and creative technologist by method

Eleven years across fintech, mobility and consumer brands, from metal cards taken through factory floors in New Jersey and Philadelphia to products people open every day. I curate the narrative, lead the teams that tell it and build the tools it needs.

A man in black beside a tall mechanical flamingo in a white studio — From the AI X series

A brand is felt as one story, not a stack of deliverables. So the work moves between strategy, image and code: an identity in two scripts, a generative pipeline for a gold card, a browser instrument built because the right one didn't exist. Experign is the studio where those threads meet.

Practice

Narrative & creative direction
Industrial design
Creative technology
Image making

Experience

Uni CardsHead of Creative & AI Creative Lab · now
PowerUp MoneyCreative leadership
JupiterAurora metal card
OLA · Ather · USTMobility & technology
ExperignStudio · ongoing