We wanted to make a house brand for Pure Options to offer a cheaper-priced yet still high-quality cannabis option to compete with the name-brand companies. We wanted something to just be sold wholesale to our store and have its own brand outside of the Pure Options name.
The persona for our new brand was a cannabis user who enjoys traveling in the Michigan area and is still looking for a quality product.
When I was initially in the sketching phase, I worked with different concepts of travel, from space travel to a more local, sandy-beach idea. Lots of the sketching phase was deciding how close to the store "Pure Options" brand we wanted to be, or if we wanted to make it more detached.
One idea we discussed was designing them in a vintage "postcard" style. We wanted to find a way to make them more variable without redesigning the package every time.
That is how I ended up with the map concept. Being able to change the package by rotating or just editing the colors gave us more options when it came to labeling the products.
I wanted to highlight different parts of the Michigan map on each of the different products, keeping them familiar but not too repetitive. I ended up creating different maps of Michigan, such as the Upper Peninsula and the Great Lakes, for future rollouts and product highlights. This will allow the design to remain fresh and interesting but stay on brand.
Lake Superior
Lower Peninsula- Michigan
Torch Lake- Michigan
Upper Peninsula- Michigan
Lake Michigan
For the final design, I ended up creating a type of topographic map of Michigan that we could rotate. I also used "Gridlite PE Variable" as the main title font to bring an idea of locating a place on a map. I used the yellow as a highlight color, and the rest were used for accents.
I had the chance to apply the design and branding to a variety of different packages and types of cannabis use. An interesting challenge was figuring out how the design looked from flat to a circular package, such as the pre-roll tube. We ended up rotating the map and adjusting the location of the title to make it legible.
Another challenge to solve was that I had to work around the different kinds of cannabis that can come in similar packages. Within cannabis, there is Rosin, as well as Resin, both different types of concentrated waxes that need to be identified. That is when I decided to use different colors to make it easier for the cashiers to identify the different products.
For each of the products, we left a large blank space for where the printer can print each of the individual information about the product. creation date and expiration date in accordance with the Cannabis Regulation Agency, or the CRA. Instead of the traditional manual sticker application, we can now work with the printer to have them automatically placed into these areas.
We had the tagline, "high standards, low fares," to refer to the lower-priced options to compete against the bigger competitors.
The "enjoy your journey" is a slogan to bring a fun travel aesthetic into the design.
