RSS Feed

‘Design’ Category

  1. 2008 High Times Cannabis Cup Jar

    September 3, 2008 by admin

    It’s been pretty crazy around here for the past few weeks. Last week we spent a week in Vegas at our fall trade show. The cover that I designed for HQ went over really well. I still don’t know that it’s my best work, but it didn’t bomb. :) It’s a relief to have it all over with, but now it’s time to start getting serious about our move to Austin and everything that needs to be designed for the holiday season. We’ll be making changes to our website and most of our print ads. I also have some neat freelance projects coming up. The most notable are the Helix and a head shop that our friends in Austin are opening. More to come on all of that in the next few weeks.

    What I really wanted to show you today was this…

    With the holidays comes the Cannabis Cup and once again we’re producing a limited edition jar for High Times. Usually the art for the jar comes at the last minute, but not this year. I’m pretty happy with the art that they are going with. It’s bright and visually interesting. Unfortunately we will not be attending the cup this year, but the jars will be available on our website sometime in November.
    cc08.jpg

    Category 420 Jars, Design | Tags: | No Comments

  2. The 420 Science Club

    August 12, 2008 by admin

    So we started the 420 Science Club about a month ago. Essentially it’s our email mailing list for our customers who want to be in the know. We’ll be offering member only specials and other various promotions (as in stuff we haven’t thought of yet). So you should join now. Here’s the email that went out today.

    august_email.gif

    I put this together in a few hours, but I don’t really think the quality suffered for the lack of time. A lot of what we do around here is “good enough.” It gets the job done and allows us to move onto the next task on our never ending list of things to do. I’m really not a perfectionist when it comes to most design projects. Most of what I design I consider disposable. So why put in all the time to make something perfect. As long as it does it’s job, which is getting our message across and looking reasonably good while doing so. There’s a time and a place for perfection. Being a good designer is knowing when that time is and when it’s time to call something good enough.

    Category 420 Jars, Design | Tags: | No Comments

  3. New Jar Designs

    August 6, 2008 by admin

    Things are busy around here. Here are the new designs that we’re coming out with next month. These are all Gary originals. I’m really happy with how everything came out. We’re excited for the new rasta themed designs. They should be very popular. The Nugs design is replacing the existing nug jar design. We’ve also updated the green leaf design to a more traditional leaf with a twist. The word cloud was our office managers idea. I’m pretty happy with that one too. The rasta leaf design is the best one though. Well at least in my opinion. :) What do you think?

    newdesigns.jpg

    Category 420 Jars, Design | Tags: | No Comments

  4. The Helix

    July 3, 2008 by admin

    Our friends at Gravitron are launching a new product over the next couples months and guess who’s in charge of the design. So we’ve been going back and forth over the past few weeks trying to get the name and logo for the product worked out. It was a fight to say the least. Which is something that I usually don’t have to deal with. I guess being my own client makes designing pretty straight forward. I make what I like. Well with this project there are a few more hands in the cookie jar and I’m finding that I have to justify why I think something should be a certain way. Everything turned out how I wanted though. So here’s the logo and also the logo assessment that I wrote to justify why this logo was the one. I’ve also included what the original logo looked like. The product was going to be called the V-tek, but we squashed that out and convinced all parties involved that the Helix was a much stronger name. I feel really good about all of this though. It’s a super cool product that you and all your friends will be talking about in the very near future. Until then, you can just look at the logo. Enjoy!

    helix.jpg

    Helix Logo Assessment

    The logo for the Helix is meant to convey a sense of movement. When placed on the piece the dots will flow towards the mouthpiece following the smoke. This creates a strong and memorable visual expericence. Legibility at all sizes is always a concern along with 1 color reproduction. These are the tenets of good logo design and this logo adheres to them closely. The name and the logo create a strong visual connotation of what’s going on inside the piece.

    The word mark is strong and proportionate to the graphic element. The flowing dots of the graphic balance the text nicely and provide strong visual movement. The dots starting at the letter i unify the text and the graphic into one cohesive logo.

    The revision of the text to a lower case font has solved the problem of the logo reading “heli – X” as it did in the previous version. The logo now clearly reads helix and is no longer disjointed. Also, the lower case e seems to be looking up towards the dot at the top of the i. This creates a interesting visual flow which carries the eye through the rest of the logo.

    There has been some concern regarding the flow of the design on the pipe. While there is some visual appeal of having a design on the piece that starts out wide and narrows towards the mouthpiece, it should not be a deciding factor in choosing a design. It must be taken into account that this brand mark will be reproduced in many other forms (print & web). Altering the design to meet the perceived need to fill the top area on the piece would create a diluted brand presence as you would have 2 different logos. (1 for the piece and one for print) A logo that starts large on one side and narrows significantly may be difficult to reproduce at smaller sizes. The logo should be consistent across all printed material. This is not just decoration, it’s the brand name. Consistent representation of the brand is needed in order to gain a foothold in the market.

    Category 420 Jars, Design | Tags: | No Comments

  5. This week in 420 Science design

    June 27, 2008 by admin

    Another week in the books here at 420 Science. Notable achievements this week include finishing the Gravitron Catalog, finishing the HQ cover and coming up with a new jar design. First the HQ ad…

    I had posted this design a few weeks ago and now it’s finally finished. I really don’t even want to look at it anymore. I had too long to work on it. I think I produce better work when I’m under pressure and a tight deadline. This piece was outside of my usual design style to say the least. It’s hard for me to be objective about it, but it didn’t turn out so bad. It’s better than most (if not all) covers they usually have. It definitely posed some unique design challenges. The main requirements for it were as follows: must contain hot chick (the magazines requirement), must show a jar and a scope (our requirement). Other than that I had total creative freedom, which isn’t always a good thing, but in the end I survived. Thanks to Sativa Verte for the rocking pictures she sent in.

    hqcoverfinal.jpg

    The next couple of weeks will be busy preparing for our trade show in late August. I’m going home to Montana for my 10 year reunion next month, so there’s a lot to wrap up before I can leave. I can’t wait for my fellow classmates to ask me what I’ve been doing since high school. They shouldn’t be surprised though. I’m sure some will laugh and not realize how big 420 Jars has become. Big. Really big. It should be interesting to say the least.

    Category 420 Jars, Design | Tags: | No Comments

  6. New Scope Poster

    June 13, 2008 by admin

    Brian, our warehouse manager, informed me that we were running low on scope posters yesterday. That meant it was time to design a new one. I wasn’t really excited about it at first because I’m swamped with work at the moment and it was just one more thing to add to the list. Not to mention it needed to be done soon. Well this morning I woke up and had a burst of creativity. I took my camera and set up a bunch of scopes in the lightbox and started shooting away. After narrowing down all the photos to the best one I dropped it onto an empty white page and thought it was beautiful all by itself. Borderline art. Now I was faced with the challenge of not messing up that art with a bunch of words and graphics. Easier said than done, but in the end, we’re pretty happy with what came out. Simple, clean and to the point. These will look great hanging up in stores. Enjoy!

    scope_poster.jpg

    Category 420 Jars, Design | Tags: | No Comments

  7. Newest High Times ad & other goodies

    June 2, 2008 by admin

    I didn’t really do a good job on writing another entry in a timely manner. But I’ve been busy. I even have something to show for it. Behold, our newest High Times ad! I guess it’s a spoiler, since this ad won’t be out for a couple months. SURPRISE! We won the Stash Award for Best Container. This ad was a departure from our past ads. Lots of white space and gold. I’m pretty happy with how the gold came out. This was one of the first ads to use photos from my new camera too. We’ve also started using props in our photos. I think it really ads to the richness of the photos. It allows the ad to be all white, but still contain color. I’d give myself a A-. Anyway…

    420winner.jpg

    It’s pretty cool to win a award for something that you do everyday. The thing that puts food on the table, or something in the Volcano, if you know what I mean. ;) Besides this ad I’ve also been working on the cover for HQ magazine. This is a trade magazine that goes out to shops. We’ve been advertising in this mag for almost 4 years. We decided to sponsor the cover for the issue that will be circulating at our next trade show. I’ve put a lot of time into different concepts and we’ve finally narrowed it down to the one we’re going with. There’s still a lot of work into refining the image, but you’ll get the idea.

    hqcover.jpg

    Other than these projects we’ve been busy coming up with new designs, working on the website and preparing for a possible move to Austin. Expect a lot from 420 Science in the months to come!

    Category 420 Jars, Design | Tags: | No Comments

  8. Maybe I should write here

    May 5, 2008 by admin

    Looking back I’d say that we’ve failed at the task of writing here more often, but once again, I’m going to pick up the torch and attempt to post more often. I even have a fair amount to write about, but it’s really the least important thing on my list of things to do with my life.

    Today I’m going to point out our new myspace profile. It took a few hours to get everything tweaked and working and there’s still more to do, but I think it’s looking pretty good. The bar is so low on myspace. So many bad profiles filled with terrible graphics, bad music and pointless information about yourself. I’d say that ours is quite the opposite. Simple, clean and easy to read. No music. No annoying graphics flashing at you. Just the information that we’re trying to get across. Buy our jars…and a scope too while you’re at it!

    Category 420 Jars, Design | Tags: | No Comments

  9. website

    June 29, 2007 by admin

    So the site’s done finally. Well, not really, but as far as you’ll know it is. There are still a lot of backend changes that we plan on making along with some more content. The link to this blog is now gone, so who knows if anyone is reading this. Maybe I can stop writing then? I like the site, but…I think I may have went a little overboard on the graphics. I suppose you could call it rich, but I think it might be a little much. Though, it doesn’t matter much. We plan on a total over-haul before the end of the year. I’m envisioning something much cleaner. Although I must say, it’s a not a bad looking site. We continue to improve our image everyday. The gap widens for anyone that wants to compete with us. I just don’t think it’s going to happen at this point. Now it’s time to do that with 420 Scope. We’ve already gotten orders for it. Production is set up and rolling and within the next 90-120 days scopes are going to be everywhere. Everywhere I say!

    Category 420 Jars, Design | Tags: | No Comments

  10. AIGA Leadership Retreat Miami

    June 25, 2007 by admin

    For those of you that don’t know what the AIGA is about, here’s a little lesson. The AIGA is the oldest and largest association for design in the nation. I sit on the board of directors for the Arizona chapter. Last week I got to attend a retreat in Miami that gathered the other boards from 57 chapters across the country. It was simply amazing. I drank the pulverable AIGA koolaide and I’m hooked now. I’m suffering from a bit of withdrawal at the moment. It was refreshing to be surrounded by so many other designers all dealing with the same problems that we are in our local chapter. I don’t know that I’ve ever met so many people in such a short time. I’m on social overload right now. I don’t want to see anyone for a week. I’m also very short on sleep. Designers like to party. Excessively. Or maybe that’s just me, but it seemed like everyone was suffering from some sort of hangover in the mornings. I think clocked in 12 hours of sleep over 3 days. Not to mention not sleeping at all on Saturday night due to the fact that our plane left at 6:30 in the morning.

    420 Jars and 420 Scope were promoted quite well too. Any time that someone asked me what I did, I pulled out our current ads and showed them what was up. I had the chance to smoke with some very lovely people and made some lasting friendships. Needless to say I’m excited to go next year, although we won’t be on South Beach. Omaha doesn’t know what it’s in for. Either do I quite frankly.

    Category 420 Jars, Design | Tags: | No Comments

Older Entries
Newer Entries