Leave it to Snoop Dogg to blaze a new trail in the marijuana industry. Earlier this week, the multiplatinum MC launched a line of cannabis products called Leafs by Snoop, and it's got weed and design enthusiasts alike drooling.
Considered the first mainstream cannabis brand in the world, thanks to its instantaneous name-recognition, the Leafs by Snoop suite of products includes eight different types of marijuana flower, each hand-picked by Snoop himself. Concentrates and edibles, including chocolate bars, gummies, and fruit chews, round out the collection.
Leafs by Snoop has more than a celebrity endorsement on its side. It has smart design.
Snoop recruited the design wizards at Pentagram to create the brand's stunning packaging. The challenge, writes Fast Company's John Brownlee, was to "create a visual identity that eschewed the 'rasta, crunchy, hempy, outlaw look' plaguing most marijuana products."
"We wanted it to appeal to a broader spectrum of human," Emily Oberman, Pentagram's team leader on the project, told Fast Company. "[Marijuana] is a field in which Snoop is a true connoisseur, and with Leafs, he saw an opportunity that was not fake, to create a business that genuinely comes from who he is and what he likes."
The packaging exudes a cool, laid-back vibe that befits Snoop's West Coast upbringing. Patterns look like they were copy and pasted from the California landscape, including images of palm trees, beaches, swimming fish, and rolling mountains.
"Snoop was naturally attracted to imagery that was more personal to him," Oberman tells Fast Company. She notes that the prints look like shirts the rapper might wear pool-side.
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Pentagram explains on its blog that the gold-plated logo drew inspiration from Snoop's love of fashion and jewelry. The cannabis leaf looks like it's made of jewel-like facets.
Oberman and her team designed a white, minimalistic box that features just the Leafs by Snoop logo, to contain the flowers. The lid slides off to reveal the vibrant, California-cool pattern underneath.
The legislation on how marijuana products may be packaged are every-changing, making it difficult to nail down a design in a short period of time. The rule of thumb says containers must be opaque and child-proof. Pentagram writes on its blog that the studio tested the bud boxes with actual children to make sure they were unable to be opened easily.
"It's like working at the end of Prohibition," Oberman says on Pentagram's blog. "Laws change from week to week, and affect what you can do. It's incredibly exciting, but it's also difficult, so we had to keep it simple."
The flowers also come with a sticker containing a quote from Snoop Dogg, such as, "Smoke weed every day!" and "Mile high feeln [sic]."
Legalized marijuana is the fastest growing industry in the US, and could be worth $11 billion annually by 2019.
With stakes this high, cannabis manufacturers are scrambling to bring products up to code and differentiate themselves from the pack. Leafs by Snoop might just succeed.
For now, marijuana users may only buy the products in Colorado dispensaries, where marijuana is legal. Sales may expand outside the state in December.
