Garden Variety Cannabis Dispensary
Client: Native Roots
Services: Logo Design, Art Direction, Identity and Collateral Design, Layout, Social Content, Apparel Design
Copywriter: Free Ice Cream
Support: Sara Butteman, Becca Reitz, Brennah Rosenthal, Josh Cook
Crafting the visual identity for one of Canada’s first and most delightful dispensary experiences.
In what is quickly becoming an oversaturated market, Garden Variety is a brand built around industry-shifting, approachable cannabis products. But, Garden Variety offers more than just great products and services—they are a group of forward-thinkers that deliver unexpected experiences with simple, quiet confidence. Garden Variety strives to find the magic in ‘every day,’ bringing delightful experiences to their customers.
Approachable doesn’t have to mean mundane. Through craft and moments of unexpected delight, we created a brand that harnesses the magic of the cannabis industry with an inexplicable sense of aliveness. Without screaming “weed”, we straddled the line between brand and lifestyle. Ultimately, we created the Sparwolf (sparrow+wolf) which functions as an iconic mascot that is as fun in its execution as it is surprising in its humanity.
The Garden Variety brand leverages a symbol that is based on the dichotomy of two animals native to the Manitoba region—a wolf and a sparrow. We named this creature ‘The Sparwolf’. The Sparwolf represents the inclusivity of Garden Variety as well as prosperity and togetherness (wolf) and creativity and freedom (sparrow). Together, The Sparwolf is our take on everyday magic.
Surrounded by an explosion of energetic and cannabis-based elements within the crest, the stand-alone Sparwolf is accompanied by three sparkles—the unexpected magic embedded into the brand.
We worked hand-in-hand with the architect to help create both interior and exterior branded elements and signage in order to round out the entire Garden Variety experience.
Helping to instill subtle moments of humanity into the brand, the patterns and textures were all created by hand. Using these textures to break hard lines or visual planes throughout the collateral aids in visual flow and approachability as well as consistency.
Elements such as cannabis leaves created from finger prints, hatch marks and scribbles were created and colorized to convey varying levels of energy, and these textures were then paired with cannabis strains. Sativas had bright warm colors and quick lines, while indicas had more flowy, smooth lines with cooler tones.
“Vicarel studios offered the unique ability to not only discover and develop groundbreaking creative, but also understood our business constraints well enough to ensure that the work they delivered could actually be implemented. Too often creatives develop ‘vaporware’ that looks great in a case study but never sees the light of day. Vicarel Studios was focused from the get-go on developing solutions that would easily allow us to move from concept to market implementation.”
A 67 page comprehensive brand guidelines was created to help ease the transition from our external brand-creation team to their internal brand-maintenance team.
Apparel / Swag Design
Treading the line between cannabis company and lifestyle brand, we developed a robust collection of over 95 lifestyle apparel, paraphernalia, graphics and accessories to further elaborate the humanity and Canadian roots of this cannabis company.
Social Media Strategy
Along with creating the visual brand and guidelines, we laid out the visual strategy and photo styles for both full-brand photography as well as the initial 60 posts on instagram.
Marketing and Collateral Design
Leaning into the fun, quirky, and educational aspects of the brand—qualities that further differentiate Garden Variety from the main players in ‘stoner cannabis culture’—we created a fun and educational quarterly ‘zine that is filled with canna-recipes, articles on the benefits of cannabis/CBD, ads and much more.
Digital & Printed Ads
Early, unused concepts and exploration:
