Esteve Pharmaceuticals
Triptomax
Befriend
your brain.
Bringing emotional well-being out of the silence, and out of the clinical aisle.
“How are you?”, “I’m fine.” It’s the autopilot answer to one of the most loaded questions in everyday life. Behind that “I’m fine” sit racing thoughts, hard days, anxiety, and a quiet pressure to keep it together. ESTEVE entrusted CBA Design with completely revamping Triptomax, its brand of natural supplements based on tryptophan -an essential amino acid that promotes emotional well-being and serotonin production. The brand sat in a category dominated by white coats, scientific jargon, and a polite distance that, ironically, made it harder for people to talk about what they were actually feeling. The challenge was to create an identity that broke with the scientific and cold codes of the sector and spoke about emotions in an authentic, approachable way, and, why not, with humor.
Speak about emotions the way we actually speak about them today.
Emotional health is no longer a whispered topic. A whole generation now talks about anxiety, burnout, low days, and mental load openly, through memes, group chats, podcasts, and honest conversations with friends. Triptomax had a real opportunity to leave the pharmacy register behind and meet people where they already are: in a culture that uses humour to cope, vulnerability to connect, and shared language to feel less alone. The strategy: to speak as we speak. We built an identity rooted in how we relate to our emotions today: sharing memes, putting things into perspective with humour, empathising, knowing we are not alone, and accepting that not everything is positive or negative. Because we are all our emotions, even those we sometimes don’t understand. The brief became less about explaining tryptophan, and more about giving emotional well-being a tone of voice.
Befriend your brain.
We landed on the Unordinary Idea: Befriend your brain -a single thought that turns Triptomax from a supplement into a daily ally for emotional honesty.
This idea reframes the relationship people have with their mental world. Instead of treating the brain as something to fix, silence or control, Triptomax invites you to get to know it, talk to it, laugh with it, and accept it on the good days and the not-so-good ones. It’s the bridge between strategy and creation: it gave the brand a clear role beyond science (a friend, not a prescription) and it unlocked the entire creative system. And it lives in culture, not just in the category -because the language of friendship, humour and honest feelings is the language emotional health is actually discussed in today.
Feel it. Name it. Share it.
A character-led identity that gives emotions a face, a name, and a voice.
We brought “Befriend your brain” to life through Max, an illustrated brain who personifies our inner emotional world in all its honesty.
Max is the visual heart of the identity: an illustrated brain that personifies our emotional world as it is -anxiety, stress, but also calm. Max appears in different moods and is the protagonist who guides communication, accompanied by an identity system that includes the revamped logo, a vibrant palette inherited from the brand’s iconic magenta, and a graphic universe designed to connect across networks, digital, and point of sale. Tone of voice was reset in parallel, swapping clinical claims for the kind of phrases you’d actually send to a friend at the end of a long day. The result is a pharma brand that doesn’t look or sound like pharma. One that turns packaging, content, and in-store moments into permission to talk about how you really feel.
A pharma brand that dares to speak differently, and a new language for emotional well-being. Recognized by a Premio Aspid.
The result is a brand that dares to speak differently, normalising conversations about emotional health and combining natural solutions with a deeply human narrative. Triptomax now occupies a space no other supplement brand in its market dares to: emotional honesty. By making “I’m fine” a real, optional answer instead of a default one, the brand has reframed its category: moving from clinical credibility to cultural relevance, from product-led to people-led. Max has become a recognisable signature in pharmacy environments and in social feeds, opening Triptomax to younger audiences who see their own moods reflected back. Because sometimes, what we need is to be able to say that we are not always fine. And that it’s okay not to be.