MIDWEST TYPE
Case study coming soon!
An exercise in self-branding. Midwest Type is our other business, now part of The Type Founders, where we craft original fonts. Making the fonts is only a part of the job, though. You have to sell the fonts, too. And selling the fonts requires promotional graphics, type specimens, a website, a social media presence, a flexible identity for retail outlets, and, these days, if you really want to grab a few seconds of precious attention, video.
services provided:
identity
custom type
photography
video
illustration
print
digital
Logo suite.
Color palette.
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).
The original California seal on the left; the redrawn Ohio seal (with buckeye leaves *wink wink*) on the right.
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.
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?
Click the button to message us or shoot us an email at info@okthx.agency.