Cream of the Crop Gardens
Branding & Product Photography
A track record of phenomenal products and a dedication to setting a new industry standard.
In 2020, I played a pivotal role in driving the marketing efforts for Cream of the Crop Gardens. I launched and managed impactful marketing initiatives across their social channels, showcasing their brand and products to a wider audience. Additionally, I contributed to their visual content strategy by capturing and meticulously retouching photos for new products and marketing campaigns. Furthermore, I had the privilege of designing a highly successful pop-up collaboration and billboard in partnership with one of San Diego’s most popular dispensaries.
Their customers expect a high level of refinement while also being open to more abstract and creative expressions of luxury, and we delivered!
Big Picture
• Collaborate with the CXO and Senior Visual Designer to support sales and marketing efforts through strategic design.
• Connect with and expand their Instagram audience.
Mankind Dispensary & COTC Gardens Pop-Up
Cream of the Crop’s collaboration with Mankind Cannabis Dispensary in San Diego is one of my favorite projects that I have gotten to be a part of. Both companies are committed to building environments that support the ethos of their brand and educate customers with connoisseur-level knowledge.
Our two main visual objectives of the partnership were to transform Mankind’s lobby with a branded vinyl wrap and design a bold yet tasteful billboard for one of the busiest roads in San Diego. We used these as an opportunity to build excitement about the brand, making visitors more likely to purchase Cream of the Crop and willing to learn about our collaboration and promotions.
When touring the space, there was a vibrant vinyl wrap installation by the talented team over at Platinum Vape, and I knew we had to create something as visually impactful and eye-catching. Cream of the Crop’s primary brand colors are gold and black but they have also developed a brilliant system of colors and flowers to represent their product’s different strain categories (Sativa, Indica, Hybrid, etc.).
The billboard and lobby designs contain a combination of the core and secondary brand colors to push the collaboration in a decidedly multi-colored direction.
For the lobby vinyl, I drew inspiration from a 2016 art installation titled, Ice Flowers, by Azuma Makoto. They froze floral arrangements in sixteen giant blocks of ice to observe the life cycle of the flowers and plants. I loved how the melting ice made the colors of the flowers bleed slightly and expanded on that with a motif of “melting into your bliss” in mind. We used the resulting melting flower design as the basis of the pop-up materials and extended it to merchandise and social content as well (see below).
