Cleveland Play House

Primary art for Pride and Prejudice poster for Cleveland Play House

CLEVELAND PLAY HOUSE

Case study coming soon!

We recently wrapped up poster artwork for Cleveland Play House’s 2024/25 season, our second year producing artwork for them. This year’s work was a bit different from our debut year as the CPH creative team wanted to start bringing more cohesion to the illustration style and begin to feel out a “house style” consistent with the organization’s branding. Did we succeed? Yes and no. But they’re playing a long game, and we made some strides in the right direction. Overall, a good project for a case study.

services provided:

illustration

Cleveland Play House Season 2024/25 posters: Pride and Prejudice and What the Constitution Means to Me
Cleveland Play House Season 2024/25 posters: A Christmas Story and Fat Ham
Cleveland Play House Season 2024/25 posters: King James and Fiddler on the Roof
Pacific Gold color palette.

Color palette.

Pacific Gold typography sample.

Typography.

The Seal

The round seal designed by Hoodzpah was deemed problematic by the state cannabis review board. As the program was still under a medical phase and recreational use had not yet been voted on and approved, we had to conform to a set of, let’s say, rigorous regulations which included the rule that cannabis plants could not be depicted on packaging, even as stylized illustrations. Our brainstorm was to replace the plants in the seal artwork with buckeye tree leaves. For those who aren’t familiar, Ohio is known as the “Buckeye State.” The review board gave the new seal design a hesitant thumbs-up. Other troublesome rules included no actual product shown in photography or video (though the devices were allowed), no sound in any video production, and no advertising (the definition of which was purposefully left vague).

Comparison of California Pacific Gold seal to Ohio version

The original California seal on the left; the redrawn Ohio seal (with buckeye leaves *wink wink*) on the right.

Pacific Gold stickers.

Stickers with the new seal artwork.

The Package

How do you advertise a product when advertising isn’t allowed? It helps to have really nice packaging. Something that stands out on a dispensary shelf, or looks great on Instagram. As with their other work, the California-specific cartons designed by Hoodzpah were beautiful, but unfortunately couldn’t be used for Ohio. Along with regulatory considerations, Jules wanted one box design that could accomodate both the existing vape pen and a new 510-thread vape cartridge. The pen would need to be reoriented which meant the carton became slimmer and taller. The label needed to allow for twice as much required data. And the child-resistant and child-proofing mechanisms needed to be rethought.

Several months later, two printers later, and after many rounds of mockups, prototypes, ink drawdowns, and revisions, we landed on the right combination of design, materials, and printing techniques. The original concept of three colorways was maintained to indicate the three strain types: indica, sativa, and hybrid. The colors were tweaked slightly in pursuit of a “sunwashed” effect. We agonized over just the right tone of gold foil. And one big win from a security as well as an accessibility perspective was a new locking mechanism that no longer required two hands to open. The new custom label blanks were printed with batch data in-house and applied at the grow facility. Each box got a sticker and an instruction card.

Pacific Gold dispensary display unit.

Dispensary display unit.

It’s our hope that our involvement with the Pacific Gold venture in Ohio was on a level with Jules’s passion for his products and attention to detail, and in keeping with his vision of an elevated cannabis brand that plays outside of the typical tropes. A laid-back but sophisticated experience. A warm beach when you need it on a cloudy day in the midwest.

Seen enough? Questions?

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