Samantha Everett.
Cannabis aficionados notice that most businesses in the industry tend to follow the same few guidelines to present their products: earthy tones, especially dark green; a cannabis leaf or a drop of liquid; sometimes medicine-related imagery like a caduceus or a medical cross… Although these characteristics make cannabis or CBD businesses easy to recognize, they can also blur an individual brand’s identity until it becomes interchangeable with others in the same area.
Milwaukee brand specialist Samantha Everett helps business owners avoid this pitfall with her own company, Pretty Lethal Designs. “A women-led cannabis branding company. In… Milwaukee? For real,” her website reads. With experience working in downtown Chicago for big corporations and craft coffee and food, Everett set her sights on cannabis after seeing loved ones get their lives back thanks to medical pot. “We really made the transition to cannabis after seeing the challenges in craft coffee were the same challenges over in cannabis,” she explains, confessing that her work is her way of supporting activism and education to make a change in Wisconsin. “When we help with the branding, we help businesses clear some of the stigma,” she adds.
Strategy and identity are the heart of business
Beyond just visual design, Everett and her team work on establishing a strategy and positioning for the business; they seek to determine what the business is about, what sets them apart, what is the brand’s purpose and why they are in the industry. “Once we have this information, that’s when we work on your logo, your design, packaging and all the other pieces that visually represent all of these ideas that we put together in the strategy.”
Establishing a clear strategy and unique identity is particularly important when working with cannabis, as she explains: “For a lot of cannabis businesses, the very first step is licensing. In order to get a license, you need to put your proposal in front of government officials, partners and investors, and you need to make sure these people are on board.” Bay Botanicals Inc., a team of three women who have a successful cannabis business on the West Coast and who are looking to transplant here, have worked with Pretty Lethal Designs to put together a letter of intent and various documents to help them with their licensing process; “That way, it is clear they have a plan, an identity, that they are organized and ready to take on the challenge,” Everett says.
When asked why business owners should consult design professionals rather than make a logo themselves, Everett cannot stifle a chuckle. “You could also do your plumbing yourself, but you will run into issues in the end,” she says. “It takes a lot of work and skills to take all of these abstract ideas and translate them into words, images and strategy.” Cannabis is particularly difficult to work with from a legal standpoint, she warns, as regulations can quickly change; it could suddenly become illegal to have a cannabis leaf on your logo, for instance.
A Midwestern identity
One of the reasons why Everett works in Milwaukee, in spite of the fact Wisconsin is not a hub of cannabis activity (aside from the numerous local CBD enterprises), is her love for the Midwestern style. She deplores the lack of exploration of that style in the cannabis industry, in particular in legal states surrounding Wisconsin.
“We feel like the design and branding in cannabis right now are great, but they really reflect the West Coast and the East Coast, and we would really like to see Midwest cannabis brands in the legal states do their own thing, show off their Midwestern style and really change the game,” Everett explains. She cites the “incredible signage and type” that we see in breweries in particular, but also all around Milwaukee. She notes that Chicago and other cities around Wisconsin all have a distinctive “vibe” they could build upon.
“The branding of cannabis companies needs to reflect involvement in the community, so we take inspiration from the local area [when we work on a brand]. It is also important to make sure that you are unique. Already, we are seeing a lot of brands using the same words and cliché images, and all it does is create confusion for customers.”
For more information, visit prettylethaldesigns.com.