'Savor the Flavor' Campaign
What makes Gelato different from other cannabis brands? The quality of our products is high, hand-crafted by passionate and experienced artisans. In order to visually differentiate Gelato from other cannabis products in the industry, I had to dig deep and empathize with our prospective customer base and imagine how our product may fit into their lives.
'To savor Gelato is to savor life... to live each moment fully, to dare to be bold, fun and free no matter who you are or where you come from'. This is the copy I put together at the conception of the 'Savor the Flavor' tagline. The solution became clear to me; Gelato simply brings us into the moment to enjoy life a little bit more. The product tastes good and makes us feel good. The word 'savor' implies tasting something delicious and that is what I wanted to communicate to our audience: Our products will allow you to 'taste' life with more flavor. The beauty of 'Savor the Flavor' is that it is simple enough to be flexibly used across numerous touch points and marketing campaigns.
I proceeded in selecting typography that could comfortably 'belong' in the existing visual identity system and created a tagline mark that would 'tag' along with our logo.
'Savor the Flavor' has been implemented and utilized across all of our social media platforms, event appearances, merchandise and nearly every touchpoint of this brand. It continues to be a core aspect of the Gelato brand and is continued to be used to this day.
Digital Marketing
Once the tagline and messaging were approved I set out in creating a social media starter kit to pitch to the team. I took into account instagrams algorithm and used my design sensibilities to create an appealing layout of posts and captions that would provide a strong start to our social media presence. We launched with a 9 piece grid with hopes of inspiring intrigue and curiosity by 'feeding' the launch day by day to our audience.
Below are roughly 3 dozen social media posts I created to launch our brand into the digital world. I used 3 and 9 piece grids, lifestyle mockups of product and inspirational quotes in juicy typography to inspire and entice our audience. Prior to our company hiring on a social media manager I had scheduled and captioned all instagram posts using the scheduling app Later. Our social media growth was pretty significant during the launch and continues to grow today.
Video/Animation Collaborations
One of my favorite aspects of working at Gelato is collaborating with our videographer Tommy Fejarang and our social media manager Leah Lombos on creative video projects. Besides helping ideate with the team, my involvement in these projects is primarily animation. Below are some examples of the work I have done with either Tommy and/or Leah.
Print Collateral
I was tasked with designing product packaging, in this case 3 strains of the disposable vape bags that contain the disposable vape or 'Flavr Stik'. The concepts were sketched out and illustrated in color before vectorizing and preparing print files in Illustrator. The product is in dozens of cannabis stores across California.
T-Shirt Designs
I was tasked with designing T-shirts for our booth at one of the biggest cannabis conventions in the country, Hall Of Flowers. I wanted to design something that had a hand-made look to it as we are a start up and a family owned business. I went with an artisanal look for the design, initially hand illustrating in Procreate on my iPad and taking the design into illustrator to vectorize and send to the vendor to print.
Lake Elsinore
The Gelato Store in Lake Elsinore launches next month and will house all of our unique cannabis brands. The deliverables for this project were three large vector illustrations to print and wrap all of the in-store windows. The theme was inspired by Willie Wonka and his Chocolate Factory. I ideated a whimsical and delicious land of chocolate rivers and donut buildings.
Videographer Tommy Fejarang and I collaborated on a 'sneak peek' of our store. Tommy filmed the live action footage of the store prior to it's launch and I animated the wall wrap within it.
