Cannabis packaging design needs to accomplish multiple goals at once. It’s not easy to create brand-relevant, appealing packaging that’s also child-resistant and compliant. Better yet, cannabis spends more time in the packaging than out of it. Your cannabis spends more time in the package than it does with you if you think about it.
Your cannabis will spend most of its life in the package until you take it out and smoke it. Packaging needs to act as long-term storage for the cannabis. Over time, factors such as UV rays, humidity, air, and temperature change can degrade your cannabis. Both damaging the terpenes and cannabinoids and reducing the effects of the bud.
Here is the final round of contestants for ADCANN’s best packaging design award.
Pure Sunfarms
In January, Pure Sunfarms announced their packaging was changing. For a lack of a better phrase, they were ditching the white packaging and going green. The white packaging with the green PSF logo would be replaced with an all-green packaging for all of their packaging. Although they started the year with mostly flower and smaller pre-roll options, they’ve moved into the bulk pre-roll format nicely.
The green pre-roll tins for their 10 packs are excellent for reuse or collection. In some provinces, their packaging is rich with strains specific artwork while in others they are limited to the all-green solid packaging. That being said, Pure Sunfarms uses resealable, reusable packaging. Their packaging is also clean, simple, and functional. Much like the product brand and product itself. The little green bag appears to be here to stay.
Mood Ring – Florida Citrus Kush
A mood ring is a thermochromic element or moonstone that changes colour based on your temperature. It’s a thermometer that changes colour. A mood ring might not be able to tell you your mood, but this Mood Ring could be your mood.
Grown in Quebec, this cannabis comes to you in a nitrogen-sealed aluminum tin to protect its valuable cargo. Cannabis degrades when exposed to changes in airflow, humidity, or UV rays. Nitrogen preserves air, which prevents oxidation and your product from growing stale. All your favourite snack foods are sealed with nitrogen, so why not your pre-snack cannabis? By packing Florida Citrus Kush in nitrogen-sealed aluminum, Mood Ring ensures that you get the cannabis as it was at the time of packaging. It’s almost a shame to pop the top.
Sundial
The Sundial line of products is broken into colours. These colours are meant to signify an effect or feeling across its product line. Dark blue packaging means the cannabis will be calming, Light blue is meant to ease. Green is meant to help one flow, and yellow packaging means the cannabis will create an uplifting effect. “Red”, or “spark, is coming soon.
Little details such as decoding your effects by colour are great for communicating the differentiation in your products and telling your audience what your products do at the same time. Packaging has a heavy burden to carry. Not literally, of course, even 28 grams barely weighs anything. Communicating what your products do and how they’re different from each other and your competitors is an important function of your packaging to consider.
Back Forty
Imagine the back of a farm. Out of the way and out of sight. The back forty acres if you will. Perfect for growing crop. Back Forty is part of Auxly’s brand portfolio.
Back Forty is meant to be all about flavour and convenience. Be it the reflective, resealable packaging for their whole flower or the clean white of their pre-roll packaging. Back Forty creates a consistent, clean approach to their packaging. The ten pack of pre-rolled joints in the style of cigarettes is not a new concept, but an all white joint was definitely different from the black and white competitors and was quite visually pleasing.
The Green Organic Dutchman
Pro-certified organic cannabis grown in living organic soil deserves to be packaged in a way that matches the time and care put in before harvest. Organic cannabis growing is equal parts about the cannabis it produces and how it contributes to the environment. Organic living soil is reusable and compostable.
TGOD’s glass jars are fully recyclable and reusable. They can either go in your blue bin or back into your stash with new bud when you’re done. The angled glass jars are also an interesting choice aesthetically. Glass jars preserve the freshness and taste of your cannabis. It’s often the case that cannabis users will transfer their flower from bags or plastic into glass to preserve it. Giving your customers a jar to start is an excellent way to preserve your product and leave a lasting impression on your consumers.
Lemonnade by Cookies
The Lemonnade store first launched in Sacramento in 2020. Founded by Cookies, Lemonnade was designed to bring the most flavorful and uplifting sativas to the market.
Lemonade’s resealable bags protect strains like Lemonchello, Lions Mane, Medellin, Tang Gray, and Yellow Fruit. The entire family comprises fruity, flavorful sativas. The bright yellow packaging and fun name beg an important question.
What do you do when life gives you Lemonnade?
You smoke it.
Garcia Hand Picked
Deadheads everywhere are feeling the ripple. Garcia Hand Picked is owned and operated by Holistic Industries who works closely with the Garcia Family to create a brand worthy of Jerry Garcia’s legacy. It’s intended to connect good cannabis with Jerry’s fans and general deadheads.
Jerry liked to share and cannabis was a communal experience with him. Jerry Garcia was a musician, artist, and visionary best known for his work with The Grateful Dead. He wrote songs, played the guitar and banjo, and he also painted. The packaging is very good at capturing that by augmenting his likeness. The flowing lines and colours capture Jerry perfectly. Missing finger and all. When it’s high time for a deadhead, Garcia Hand Picked helps to keep you truckin’. Shake it sugaree, this is your time.
OZONE
The gold lettering screams premium against any colored background. Be it in a glass jar or a metal tin, AWH could come out with a bright pink package and the gold letters OZONE would make it feel premium. Their current colour schemes are gold & blue or gold & grey. What a package conveys with its colours and branding is important. Sometimes packaging is the best way to connect a product with its audience.
OZONE is part of AWH’s family of brands. AWH operates in Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York.
WYLD
Wyld Edibles are currently claiming to be “America’s favorite gummy”. Founded in central Oregan by three friends who started with a single burner stove. They now operate in multiple states and Canada. Wyld’s gummies are based around real fruit and natural flavors. Their packaging reflects their ingredients quite well.
Lucid Design’s packaging for Wyld reflects the real fruit focus with artwork of real fruit. The interesting shape of the boxes and the artwork to tell you exactly what you’re getting pears quite well. Be the judge, are they America’s favorite packaging?
Teal Cannabis by Duallok
Duallok designs intuitive, child-resistant packaging for the cannabis industry. Everyone knows Duallok, even if they didn’t know they were opening a Duallok package. They make the vape packaging with the two pieces you push and hold in while also pushing the main part of the box out. Duallok has earned themselves a certification from Operation Safe Child in Michigan. Duallok has partners in the US and Canada.
Teal Labs is based in Missouri and founded by Adolphus Augustus Busch V. The Busch in Anheuser-Busch Inbev, the brewery that brought you Budweiser, Shock Top, Stella Artois, and more. Although Teal has no connection with the family business, ABV has been involved in the cannabis industry since 2015 and brings generations of adult-consumption knowledge. Partnering with a leader in packaging compliance was no accident.
Which of these cannabis brands had the best packaging design?
Last Updated on January 11, 2022 by ADCANN
