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  1. Stony Awards

    September 11, 2008 by admin

    Every year High Times puts on an event called the Stony’s. It’s like the Oscars for weed related films and TV shows. Here’s a clip from Conan O’Brien talking about the awards show.

    So, Matt calls me today (he’s on vacation) and tells me that we’re going to be sponsoring this years Stony’s. Of course I’m like “fuck yeah, let’s do it!” And with that, we were in. I’m really excited at the prospect of meeting Seth Rogen. I love that guy. How awesome was Superbad? We also took all of our employees to see Pineapple Express a few weeks ago. Also an awesome stoner flick. Who doesn’t want to have a whacky adventure with their dealer? The show is Sept 27 in LA. We’re going to be taking a few of our employees and some select friends along with us. I think it’s going to be a great time and an adequate substitution for the Cannabis Cup this year. Only a 5 hour drive too. I don’t think I’ll miss the 12 hour flight to Amsterdam this year.

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  2. SmoCo Logo

    September 10, 2008 by admin

    Our friends in Austin are opening a head shop and guess who’s designing the logo. That’s right, this guy right here. The shop will be located off of South Congress in an area that’s known as SoCo. Yes, as you probably guessed, it’s a hipsters paradise. People riding around on fixed gear bikes, eating tex-mex and doing whatever else we hipsters do. (Yes, I’m admitting that I could be called a hipster, but I’m a elitist graphic designer first and foremost.) Anyway, being in SoCo, we decided to call the shop SmoCo. Matt and I were brainstorming names and came upon this one withing minutes (his idea). The minute I heard it I knew it was golden. It wasn’t hard to sell anyone else on the name either. So, with the shop now christened, it was time to make it look good. I sketched out a few different ideas before coming up with a solution that might be considered a little obvious, but quite clever never the less.

    There are still some final touches that need to be worked out, but this is pretty much it. Everyone loves it too. I believe Evan called it a “home run”. I don’t if it’s an award winning logo, but I do think it’s a great solution for the shop. I have lots of ideas for all the different applications of the logo too. Shirts, fliers, ads…you name it. Now I just need to get paid for it. That’ll be $2000 Evan.

    smoco.png

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  3. New High Times Ad

    September 5, 2008 by admin

    This is the ad that will be running in the December 08 Issue of High Times. I’ve been working on this for the past few days and I feel that it came together nicely. Both Matt and I are happy with the direction that our ads have been heading lately. Lots of white space with a nice photo. Everything I have been designing for the past year has tended to be a bit busy. I’ve been showing a lot more graphic restraint lately. The primary factor has been my new camera.(sony a350) This has allowed me to take much more professional photos. The inclusion of prop weed into the photos has also added an extra punch to our ads. Yes this is my job. Taking pictures of jars with wonderful inside of them.

    htdec08.jpg

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  4. Fall 2008 Wholesale Catalog

    September 4, 2008 by admin

    The trade show also requires a new catalog. This is easily our nicest wholesale catalog to date. We’re very happy with the outcome. Matt’s favorite part is the “printed with soy ink” logo in the bottom corner of the cover. I didn’t think he’d even go for it, but he loved it. We’re so eco-savvy. :)

    Along with the catalog came several banners and an entirely new booth setup. It was definitely the biggest presence that we’ve ever had at a show. Below you can see the catalog and a picture of the booth.

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    booth.jpg

    Something that I’m also curious about is the amount of people reading this blog. Who are you 147 people this week? I’m sure I know some of you personally, but I surely do not have that many friends. I’m a dick after all. ;) I guess when you have close to 5000 friends on myspace some of them are bound to read what you write. It makes me wonder if what I’m writing is any good. This is myspace, does it even matter? Do people really care about what I design for us? I guess I really don’t care if people think it’s good or not. I just do it because I can and I like to write. It gives anyone who’s interested a look into the design process at 420 Jars. We’re really unique in the fact that one of the owners (me) is a designer. It definitely gives us an edge. I suppose that I’m doing something right. 147 readers this week can’t be wrong.

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  5. 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

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  6. 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.

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  7. 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

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  8. 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.

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  9. 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.

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  10. Bobby & Whitney (I mean April)

    June 19, 2008 by admin

    So this week I’ve been working on a catalog for our friends at Gravitron. I took over all of their design work a couple of months ago and it’s kept me busy to say the least. Managing 2 brands can be a little overwhelming at times. It takes some extra effort to make sure our ads don’t look to similar. What can I say? I have a style. So that’s what’s been going on this week, but that’s not what I’m going to write about.

    I’m going to write about someone near and dear to my heart. Bobby Black. Some people love him, some…not so much. Me? Well it’s personal. You see, Bobby Black is dating one of my best friends in the whole world, April. She just moved to NYC to live with him and become the Future First Lady. I honestly couldn’t be happier for her and Bobby. We’ve been working with High Times for a few years now and he’s always been one of my favorite personalities at the magazine. Now it’s almost like we’re family. Which is pretty cool considering who we are (420 Jars). I don’t know of many other companies that have a “in” like that. Though High Times has always treated us well, it seem as if having April in NYC as our representative will bolster our relationship over the next few years. She is truly one of our biggest fans. She’s collected 23 jars over the years. Our close friends having multiple jars isn’t rare by any means, but 23 could border on the excessive. She also wears her 420 Jars T-shirt to the HT office whenever she goes in.

    It’s not too far fetched to say that if it wasn’t for 420 Jars, Bobby and April, may have not ever met. April traveled with Matt and me to the 2006 Cannabis Cup. It was there that she and Bobby met for the first time. I believe it was love at first sight. By the 2007 Cannabis Cup April and Bobby were the pot power couple. Now she’s in NYC and adjusting to the East Coast life style. She’s about as West Coast as they come, but I know she can handle it. She just got hired for an awesome job today too! So congratulations April. You deserve it. And thank you Bobby for everything you do for our company and for making one of my closest friends so happy. I wish you both the best.

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