When Bloom Farms first approached Pavement nearly three years ago, Michael Hester, Principal & Creative Director, felt hesitant to take on this new client. Cannabis was (and arguably still is) a bit of a polarizing subject. By working with Bloom Farms, the agency has helped pave the way for more luxury cannabis items that don’t rely on the stoner stereotype, including these elegant hand rolls. We chatted with Mike about working with packaging that has such a small surface area, cannabis regulations, and the process for expanding the brand.
Pavement: For quite some time, we had been discussing with Bloom Farm’s founder Mike Ray how we could potentially leverage the success of their Highlighter product into new product ventures. When it was finalized that Bloom Farms would be launching a new Hand Roll product, the design process started by determining just how the product would tie into the main brand and the Highlighter product. Rather than it being a straight line extension, we knew we wanted it to stand on it’s own, but still have an obvious tie to the Highlighter product branding. Initial design studies focused on playing with the existing brand elements in different and deconstructed ways to determine just how far we could “push” the brand. A unique packaging structure was also explored. After an extensive, multi-round exploration, and several product changes that required rethinking both the structure and the graphic applications multiple times, we landed on an abstract and simple interpretation of the original brand that highlighted the purity and craftsmanship of the product.
Pavement: The biggest goal was to leverage the success of the Highlighter product. We wanted to instantly attract loyal Bloom Farms customers with this new product. We did this by using familiar elements, but in unexpected ways, so that the product felt differentiated but instantly recognizable.
