Why I Work in Branding for Emergent Industry:
A Manifesto

I believe we are all divine.

I believe humans inherently want to create, help and contribute.

I believe our power has been misguided and misused, especially when it comes to communication, propaganda and “big branding,” what we believe, and how we are steered.

I believe the majority of humans have no idea who Edward Bernays was, what he accomplished, or especially, what that means for the last 100 years of human history.

I believe every human should be prepared from childhood with the principles of design thinking, logic, propaganda, persuasion and communications that Madison Avenue and governments have had for 100+ years.

I believe in humans self evident relationship with plants and plant compounds and the continued information war over this clear relationship as well as our our neglect of the obvious duty to honor and study it, is a stark, shining example of why we need to fight for business to be different.

I believe it requires a generally educated population in principles of reasoning, psychology, logic, criticism, communication, philosophy and spirituality to hold large organizations capable of wielding mass power, accountable.

I believe the general population of the world has purposefully not been educated in these areas nearly to the degree it needs to be, as these very principles and the lack of them have been weaponized against us without our knowledge.

I believe this has resulted in global corporate oligarchy akin to global fascism.

I believe there is no left or right, that all political parties bow to the corruption of power.

I believe that because of this:
The tax system is massively corrupt.
The world governments are massively corrupt.
Central banks are ubiquitously and egregiously corrupt.
The big 6 media companies are massively corrupt.
Big business both state and secular, ag, pharma, prisons, schools, energy… massively corrupt.

I believe warring back is not the answer.

I belief self responsibility is the answer.

I believe we can change it. We can build new societal processes and systems. We can think things through all the way. We can be self-responsible and super abundant.

I believe we can self govern.

I believe branding and business can be done differently.

I believe in giving innovative companies in emergent industry the business and branding tools to help humanity by making change for good against bad actors with big money.

I believe we can build signs that gently guide us where we genuinely want and need to go while not leaving us in the dark about the guidance and steering itself.

I believe that’s what branding is all about.

It’s way-finding. Guiding humans where they want and need to go.

I believe it’s not up to me to fix.

I believe it’s up to all of us.

Every great designer has great processes. They know how to interview the client, turn that interview into clear objectives, show direction with examples and lead the client through the design process.

Junior designers ‘wing it.’ They try to impress with technique and flair. They skip past the important first phases of design which is discovery, research and sketching. They jump straight to the computer and go for the final product not understanding that a pencil and paper is the quickest way to get a feel for composition and that the best work may look simple but it is arrived at through many steps and lines of inquiry.

My process is simple but very deep. It goes in five steps and it works for the smallest of design needs all the way to building a full global brand. It's just a matter of scale and time. A patch has far less audits than a full brand identity.

So without further ado, Here they are:

1. Research. Research is comprised of a series of audits. I look at your marketing plan, your competition, the tech involved in your business, as well as the language and voice of your brand to date and any industry legal information. Basically the goal is to know your business and industry as well as you do.
2. Strategy. Based on the research, it's time to synthesize and clarify your brand or project strategy. Understand the problems needing to be solved. Remember, design is about function first. Ask, what is it for? Create briefs summarizing research and overall creative strategy.
3. Design. Based on the research and creative strategy brief, we manifest the look and feel, typography, word mark, icon(s), textures, and color for all animated, digital and print applications that are needed. This is a collaborative process, all hands on deck, you are sure to learn a lot as am I.
4. Implementation. Once the design work is all done its time to develop all applications for all necessary touch points. Packaging, signage, website, favicon, correspondence, business cards, collateral, advertising, environments, vehicle graphics, uniforms, ephemera, etc.
5. Management. We launch the project or brand, create design SOPS, brand manuals, deliver all reproduction files and often engage in retainer management when it’s a full brand.

That's how I move from start to ‘finish’ with any project. It's a meticulous process that takes time but has impeccable results.

So if you are out there and you are looking at hiring a designer, make sure you are going through all of these steps or something similar. Like I said, every great designer has a process that feels somewhat like mine.They may condense things or combine steps and call it a seven or a three step process but all of the details will be in there.

If you are trying to save money, and are hiring a junior or going to a website where there's a field of designers, remember that you are going to have to be the master of the process and you won't be able to rely on them for it. If you don't have time or the understanding to manage the design process, I highly recommend hiring a professional.

If you are looking at me but you don't think my style is quite a fit, no worries, hit me up and I will point you to a great designer that fits the style you want. As always, just slide in to my dms or send me an email. If you think you can't afford it, there's always a way, and you should never settle when it comes to your business your brand and your future.

I hope you find this helpful and challenging and look forward to hearing from you.

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It will be quick is an easy thing to say. Hey! I saw you know how to make money on investing, can you help me? It'll be quick. Hey! You're a mechanic right? My car wheel is making weird sound... it'll be quick.

The problem with it'll be quick is that it completely overlooks the years of study and dedication it took to get to a place where the professional can quickly do something that for you is nearly impossible if not totally so.

When we hire professionals we don't just hire them for the hour. We hire them for their blood sweat and tears, the dues they've paid, their experience. That's why we pay professionals 100+ an hour and sometimes up to $400! Because we aren't buying an hour. We are buying a lifetime of knowledge and expertise for an hour, and there’s a big difference.

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We all want things quick and easy. Except when we finally build our dream home. We don’t just take any old floor plan. We want it designed. We want it thought out. We want a serious amount of empathy.

We want the designer of our house to know everything about us so he can design the home to suit our needs perfectly. We want space for our bicycles designed into the garage. We want our backyard designed to suit a Fourth of July super party complete with built-in grill, pool, patio, shade, garden and all the other bells and whistles a good back yard needs.

We need the right amount of bedrooms and baths and storage space and car spaces in the garage… on and on it goes. The line item checklist is a half a mile long that a designer need to think through.

The same is true for all design done properly. Whether it is a poster, or a chair, or a personal product, or a logo, there is a process and a checklist to make sure that the desired function is achieved.

Function is what it is all about.

Anyone can make a useless machine like a mobile. Something that sits and spins around in the air for no reason, catching our attention and fulfilling very little purpose other than tho illustrate the movement of air which is already done better by a tree.

It takes no thought or effort to tie things together and hang them. It takes entirely another person to conceive of the airplane, or the American Airlines logo, or the New York subway map.

If you are like me and you work in design, I encourage you to always remember the function and ask yourself, “What is it for?”

If you are a consumer of design or a purchaser of design you need to remember, you aren’t hiring an artist. You are hiring a master empathetic planner who plans exceptional communication on your behalf.

It’s not an easy job, and it takes a vast amount of knowledge of demographics, psychographics, business models, trends and more.

So, if you are needing to hire a designer, know up front that there is a process and nothing great is going to just get strung together. Depending on your project and your needs and ambitions, the planning may take a few hours, or it may take a few weeks, so be patient and be ready to accept that nothing is as easy as it looks, in fact the easier it looks, the more difficult it likely is and the ease is just a result of fabulous planning. Don’t take it for granted.

I hope this helps all of you out there a bit in your journey, and if you need design work and great planning, I am here for ya!

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It happens all the time. A potential client calls. They have an urgent need. Which is funny, because it’s marketing, not heart surgery. They want the best work and they want it super fast and they want it cheaper than it costs, they want a deal. This is also interesting because you don't get a new iPhone and complain that there's only $20 worth of parts in your $1000 tool. You pay for it because of the completeness of the design.

They have forgotten that there are three ways they can get the job done; good, fast, and cheap.

The problem is, you can only pick two. I can do design for cheap, but it will either be low quality work, or it will take a very long time. I can do work very fast and urgently, but it will be very expensive if you want top tier work. Yet, we aren’t even approaching this properly by speaking this way. We are speaking about design as an expense, not an investment of high value. There is a big difference.

The thing about good design, is that when done properly, it has a direct correlation to sales and your customer relationships. Every branding and packaging professional knows exactly what I am talking about.

The combination of a logo and icon that tells your story, coupled with good packaging and marketing, if done right and built from a proper understanding of your brand and your audience, can change an entire marketplace. All of your favorite brands have done this, and if you want real success on a multi-state, national or international level, you have to do it right.

You need to understand your vision and your mission and your five to ten year business plan. You need testing. You need focus groups. You need consulting. You need in store research… Designing visual solutions to enable maximum connection to the customer isn’t something you wing, it’s something you purposefully design and execute on a solid foundation of research. This ensures high likelihood of success (nothing is ever guaranteed in life, not really.) If branding and packaging is done right, you almost can’t lose as long as you operate the rest of your business properly as well.

So, if branding and package design helps your business succeed over the long term, even if it only 5% responsible overall (I know it’s a lot more than that, visual storytelling is how all customers connect to you first), what’s that worth over the life of your business? Well, if your business makes a million dollars a year for ten years what’s 5 percent of that value? It’s half a million dollars.

Now let me ask you this, would you pay someone half a million dollars if you knew that you were guaranteed a product that would help you to make 9.5 million? I sure as hell would. Every time. The funny thing is that when the value is actually that high on branding a company, clients balk at ten thousand or even five for their branding.
You know what that tells me? That potential client doesn’t understand my value, nor do they understand theirs, and just like dating, no one wants a serious relationship with someone who doesn’t understand their own value.

So if you are out there, thinking that marketing and design services are “expensive,” do you yourself a favor and change your mindset, it's the only way you are going to get super high quality work from beginning to end.

If you don’t want to change your mindset and you want “wing it” design services, there are plenty of sites where you can get what you want for a lot cheaper than you are hoping to pay me or any other freelancer worth a damn. Google "cheap design services," or go directly to 99designs.com, fiverr.com and more. If you are looking to reduce expense and get super-average work with no research and very little value (which means, no matter how cheap it is, it's expensive) all while getting it done quickly, that’s the place for you.
You can Venmo me $100 for saving you $5000 or more.
@Jesse-Barney ;)

If you know how valuable your company is, and you want only the very best, with proper research and testing resulting in a product that you know you can rely on, then you should call me because my work isn't expensive, my work is valuable. Any designer who knows their place will tell you the same thing.

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Content is king. This has been a mantra of marketers on the internet for since Bill Gates said it in the nineties. If you google the phrase, you will come up with endless articles on the the subject. The premise is that by creating content for your audience you create valuable connection with those who consume your content. The point is to create a channel of communication where you can build trust and value and bring in new customers.

Not just any content will do. It has to be valuable in some way. It must bring awe, humor, education, or inspiration to the table. If your content has more than one of these, then you have something very valuable. The trick is to get it to the right person. The person who needs to hear you. If you are looking to get educated on this subject you must read:

1. Made to Stick - Chip and Dan Heath
2. Contagious - Jonah Berger
3. The Tipping Point - Malcolm Gladwell

‍This trio of books, if read to and implemented, is guaranteed to make your content A LOT better and give you massive insight on how to ship it out to the world.
So the question is, are you creating content that you publish while you learn? A blog? A podcast? A YouTube channel? Creating and publishing content benefits you first. It clarifies your thinking. It help you learn to distill your message.

If you aren’t creating and publishing already, today is the day to start. If you have been doing it, but you fell behind, today is the day to get back on. I look forward to seeing you out there on the Interwebs.

Peace, Love and Rock’n’Roll

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This is a message for those who are new to the Cannabis industry, or maybe not new. Whatever the case, we have a major branding problem. In every state that cannabis becomes decriminalized or legal, a plethora of new businesses spring up around the plant. As that happens, a swarm of bad brands are born. It’s not that the people have bad taste. Nor is it that they don’t have anything about them that makes them good at what they do. At least let's hope not. The problem is that as a society consuming branding unlike any other, we also typically have no basic education around the subject in our schools.

What ends up happening is that the moment that cannabis gets legal in a state, invariably, someone thinks they are a genius and they name their farm or dispensary “Green Alternatives.” Go ahead and search on instagram and see how many businesses are named that. I came up with four right away. I am sure if I scrolled, there are many more variations like Green Alternatives 420, etc… It was a good idea in 1994 when the first dispensaries and buyers clubs were opening in California, but it was only a good idea once.

So, I would like to spend a bit of time telling you what NOT to do when naming your business. I have outlined quite a bit about how to name in my four part series on naming and trademarking (Post 1, Post 2, Post 3, Post 4,) but I glossed over this part. Here goes.

• Stay away from the word green. Don’t even go for the faux intellectual idea of using "verde" or some other foreign word to say the word green. In fact the real rule here is, don’t use anything that describes the plant at all. Stay away from leaf, flower, roots… Just avoid it completely. No, your exception doesn’t work. Period. Just accept it. Trust me, life is better this way. :P
• Stay Away from any specific words that denote weed. Canna, Mary, Mari, Kanna, Cannabis. There are literally thousands of Canna-this’s and Mari-that’s, Whosakannas and Whatamary’s all over the world. No, you can’t use the latin word for it. No you can’t use the Hindi word. No, you can’t say it in Hebrew. Stop. You can’t use the word. That’s the end of the story.
• The same goes for Natural, Wellness, Alternative, Apothecary, Healing, Health, or any other generic wellness term. Don’t use it. It’s not okay. Seriously. Stop.
• How about the word Elevated? Highly? Lifted? Any word describing the effect. Let's apply the same rule. NO. NOPE. NOT ONCE. NOT NEVAH.

Let’s just say this. The point is to find something original. Something true to you that is NOT common. Maybe you grew weed outdoors for years and you refused to wear shoes when working with the plants. There are so many unique naming possibilities from something this simple. Barefoot, Strongfoot, Holy Ground, Naked Feet…
Maybe your mom had a brass pipe that you loved. Old Brass, Mom’s Brass, Brass and Fiber… Any of these are better than Verde Farms or Green Mountain Medicine or whatever other generic name that might be brought to the table.

So, what needs to be done here is to look at the landscape, look at anything and everything that is common or everyday and AVOID IT AT ALL COSTS. A day on instagram searching cannabis hashtags can get a lot of this work done. If you have already gone down the wrong road, then you likely know how much of a pain it is when you are trying to distinguish yourself from ten other similar companies with a similar name growing at a similar rate. The longer you go without rebranding, the worse it gets. The best thing you could possibly do for your business in the long run is rebrand. I know the pain you feel when considering that. If you plan to build something worth selling though, or even more, worth keeping in the family for a long time, I contend that you should build something that will stand out.

Differentiation is the key. What makes you different? This is what I am asking us to think about. When it comes to branding, we have to stop thinking about the things that we all have in common. We all have the plant in common. We all have health and wellness and revolution on our minds. The question is, what do you have that is really unique and great? This question needs to be answered in a very real and consistent manner. If the answer is, “I don’t know.” That’s okay, but you have to answer the question. If you really can’t, then you should consider going and working for someone else who already can. Go commit to a badass that really has their handle on things. Learn. Grow. Get better. There is no shame in becoming a linchpin in someone else’s organization. We need linchpins more than ever. Not everyone has to start a business. Not everyone has a great idea. But everyone needs linchpins.

This all ties together. Branding and naming has to start with three things.

Know thyself.
Know thy enemies.
Know thy friends.

In other words, know who you are and how you fit in the landscape of your industry. If you can’t completely describe the industry from top to bottom and how you fit and provide something everyone needs then you have schooling to do.

One thing I can tell you for sure. You are not “Green Wellness Heart Center.” That doesn’t say anything. It’s just a really complex way of saying “Weed Store,” which defines everyone who sells weed, not just you.

It’s time to do the work. If you know someone starting a business or who has a poorly branded cannabis business, would you mind sharing this with them? Guaranteed, it will save a major headache lasting years, and tens of thousands of dollars at the minimum if they read all of my posts on naming.

Peace, Love and Rock’n’Roll

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One of the skills that designers and clients need, which is not readily apparent, is the ability to transpose and convert language. It is the designers job to lead the way on this, especially if the client is “green.” What I mean is this:

Clients typically have a good eye. Most people do. We have all seen the best of graphic design. We have seen great film and photography. We know good when we see it. Designers spend years in research and practice learning a language to describe all of this. We learn genre and style, history and progression. We have word for things like “Swiss-Style,” or “Russian Constructivism,” a couple of my favorite styles and periods of graphic design. We also learn and know words for shapes, geometry, mathematics and more. We learn an entire syntax built around describing visual information and how it is perceived.

The consumer of design doesn’t typically have this level of knowledge around what they consume. They don’t know that letters need to be 6 inches tall to be read by more than 80% of the population at one hundred feet while moving in a car. They don’t know that circles communicate unity and wholeness and squares create confining spaces and division.

The point is, we have separate languages for looking at the same thing. The best designers and clients spend the most time transposing the languages and making sure that what is described from both parties is actually in alignment. A client might say something vague and generic like, “Can you make this poster look bolder?” What they mean is, that  they don’t like the page laid out on a white back ground and they want more texture and color added to the entire page.

A designer would say the opposite. Adding texture and color will make the graphics and text “less bold,” by decreasing contrast. The boldest you can be is stark, thick, black lines on lots of negative white space, or better yet, A red circle on a white page with white type in the circle. That’s bold. Every gradation away from that we get, we lose contrast and boldness. What the client is talking about is look and feel, not boldness and contrast. It takes a skilled designer to ask the right questions at this point to get to the bottom of what the client really means so that the designer can create the right thing, in the right style, for the right reasons.

One of the questions I find very helpful at this point is “What is it for?” If we ask this question, we can usually come up with the kernel of purpose. If the purpose of the poster is to look super cool, then adding a lot of detail and color and texture is likely to be useful. If the purpose is to make a lot of text very legible and readable, then we need good hierarchy with clean easy to read type and no details to distract from the information. Of course, this is a spectrum and we need to understand where in the spectrum we sit, as well as the genre and style we need to execute in this spectrum.

This exercise takes an abundant amount of communication and defining terms through transposition and conversion of meaning. Whether you are the designer or the client, or both, take the time to slow down and ask questions. The right questions will get your language straight and if you can clearly describe it with words so anyone can understand it, you can sketch it out. If you can sketch it, you can make it. So get to work!!! :D

I hope you have as much fun diving in to this with your coworkers and clients as I do.

Peace, Love and Rock’n’Roll

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There is a lot of confusion out there about branding. The language behind visual communication is very specific. I often get new clients asking me if I can "just make them a logo." My answer is invariably and emphatically, no. What is needed is for me to distill their brand identity and create a visual system that works for their brand and a logo will never do that by itself.

Just a “logo” is really not enough, but it can be enough to start a system, if you have the brand identity work done.

You see, the word logo is a greek word that literally means “word.” So technically, a logo is the wordmark. In other words, it is your company name written out in type. Hopefully you or a designer choose a typeface family for your brand that has the right personality (or none at all) for your brand and has a big family for expressiveness in copy and advertising.

Once that is done and you type your name on a page, you have a logo. Of course you would do well to customize the type in a few ways, so not just anyone can retype your logo in the same font, but that is not always necessary. Many companies have their logo in Helvetica. Now, we haven't even asked the most important questions. "Is the name good?" "Does the name speak to the customer, or does it speak to the person who came up with the name?" But, I am getting ahead of myself. I ask these questions in my branding discovery session as outlined below.

So how do we get here? How do we make sure that we pick the right typeface? How do we customize the type? What about the actual “logo?” I know that most peoples definition of logo is actually an icon. They want a stamp, a simple image that says something about who they are and what they are about.

The truth is, we are far ahead of ourselves. Before we pick a typeface and write out our name, before we make an icon and any imagery, we have a lot of questions to ask and have fully answered.

This is why I do a branding discovery session with clients before we even make anything. This is more like a day with a therapist and a coach. In this session, I ask a series of just over fifteen questions that go from the very simple and broad overview of the who, what, where, when, why of the brand, all the way to very deep and pointed questions like, “If there was nothing stopping you, no resistance or obstruction, what is the first thing you would accomplish for your business today?”

What a question like this does, is it allows the business to stop thinking about what they want people to see in an icon and start thinking about who they really are. Often, who we really are and what we want to look like are very different realities and in order to make a logo and an icon, or a full branding system, which is what is really needed, we need the truth first. Who are you, what is the soul of your company and how do your real world customers see you in reality?

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The point of this initial discovery is many fold beyond just unearthing the truth of your brand. It does many things that make the process better for everyone:

1. Create a series of thresholds that allow the client and I to opt out of the relationship if it becomes clear that we aren’t a good fit. This is actually a good thing. If I do the initial branding discovery and find the client is not for me for some reason, I always know a designer that will be a good fit and that is what really matters here because you can’t get great work done if there isn’t full synergy. Humility around this is key to starting great work.

2. Find weaknesses the business leaders didn’t know they had in their brand. From supply chain issues to employee training and even small things like how well your parking lot works, all of this is a part of your brand. Every aspect of the experience is creating an overall perception of who you are. A brand is a lot more than a logo. You might have the coolest icon in the world, but if your customer service sucks then your brand will too.

3. Find strengths that the leaders can strengthen and develop. Often when businesses are focused on fixing details and getting better at the minutia, they forget what their core strength is. I have even had meetings where the business had completely lost track of their purpose, chasing every little stream of income and in the session, the owner had an aha and restructured to get back to their original purpose which in the end, made them a ton of money. That decision was more valuable than any typeface choice or icon I made and the visual identity cost more money!

4. Get to know the brand as well or better than the business owners and managers themselves. This is my goal. I cannot divine the kernel of truth for your imagery without understanding everything about your business as well or better than anyone. Believe me, when you have a third party learn about your business as well as you, and they lack the emotional attachment to the darlings of your business, you are about to learn a lot about yourself you did not know!

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All of these questions serve to inform the visual decisions and make the process a lot easier as well as giving the client confidence about the decisions that are being made because they can see the reasons why at every step.

At the end of the session I spend the next day making a summary and creative brief, delivering all of my findings, advice and direction for creating the visual identity system.

This summary outlines how much work the branding system will take to build and the timeline and path to get there as well as all of the foundational info that we will be working with to create it.

In getting to this point the client has gone through a lot. This is an intense and deep soul searching session and the answers aren’t always answers the client wants to hear. Some of the answers mean we have to back track things that have been done improperly. This means wasted time and money. There can be pain involved and bedside manner along the way is everything.

There are exceptions to this. I have encountered businesses where they have someone on their team who is knowledgable and has been doing this work the whole time and they can submit all of the info I need without this session. Sometimes a team that is that savvy literally just needs a typeface and an icon, but in my experience that is  a one in a thousand chance. Most businesses aren’t that prepared, they have been focused on the bottom line, not how to do great visual storytelling.

So, if you are looking for a “logo” consider that you likely need a lot more than that and you would do well to do a branding session like I have described. If you need one with me, you know how to get a hold of me.

jb@barneydesign.co

Peace and Love on your journey to revealing yourself to the world!

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There is a common theme in cannabis right now. It’s a disease that finds itself everywhere.

Mids.

The truth is, very few people know what great cannabis really is. It starts with great genetics and then it takes a great grower who understands every detail of the ecology surrounding the plants, whether sun grown or not. Regardless of the farmers knowledge, it takes a fair amount of luck and blessing and cooperation from your environment to get plants to really take off. Then comes harvest, knowing when to harvest, and then drying and curing properly... Many of the best growers get impatient here and settle for money for their half-finished weed.

To add to this, if you have grown just a few plants more than once, you know it’s fairly easy if you take the proper care everyday. The challenge is that growing 100 plants is a lot different than growing five. Even more, growing thousands is the difference between knowing how to walk down the street on the sidewalk and knowing how to drive a commercial semi truck on the freeway, sorry, but your walking knowledge is just not going to help you.

So what have we done in light of this? We have started an entire industry based around scaling something that we originally trained ourselves and the plants to do on a very boutique level.

This training was the gift of prohibition. It created very high prices which allowed a grower with just a small garage full of plants to be able to sustain a family. This, in an underground, free market resulted in thousands of farmers and growers which in turn, led to a wide variance in quality that the consumer could see clearly. After some time, the “stoners” expected nothing but the best and would turn their nose at “green buds,” which was better than brick weed but not the fire Cali Outdoor we would all get in December.

Through the seventies, eighties and nineties, the underground boutique growers just got better and better. They were seeing each others weed on Dead and Phish Tour as well as out on the Hip-Hop scenes, and they were sharing trade secrets with each other as well as seeds and genetics.

Then cannabis became legal. Ish. Suddenly it became many peoples dream to grow a hundred thousand plants. Or maybe that had been their dream and it finally seemed attainable.

One problem. No one had really done it before. Not in the US. Not with the feminized, flower focused growing that we do. So what happened was we had an onslaught of thousands growers who were pretty good at growing a couple hundred plants start trying to go legal and grow thousands, or sometimes tens of thousands of plants. Now we have companies trying to grow this style at the scale of hundreds of acres!

Along the way, these companies lost their mission. It used to be that all that mattered was who grew the best weed. Now, everyone is focused on who can grow the most. This leads us to mids. Green Buds. Borderline swag. When companies are focused on volume, quality usually suffers. It happens to nearly every product we make. Nike was originally a handmade shoe customized for each athlete. Now it’s mostly a bunch of generic Chinese plastic with a swoosh and a boatload of democratic design.  Mids. Cannabis in America is following this model.

Here’s the kicker. There are valleys in the world who have been outgrowing the entire US cannabis economy for thousands of years. They don’t fuss with feminizing it. They open grow the plant in 3 million acre fields and turn it all into the best concentrate in the world. So while we are focused on building hundred million dollar facilities to grow mid flowers, they sungrow the best weed in the world for free and turn it into a product our flower can’t compete with.

Sorry, but the mid business is built to fail. It can’t last long enough to support much of anything except maybe a bit of a bubble that one can hopefully cash in on before it bursts.

So what is the way out? Learn from the best. Make concentrates the way the rest of the world does. Or, make the cheapest, shittiest, most average, most generic mids you can and put a swoosh on it, and if your swoosh is cool enough and you can tell people to “Just Smoke It” then you will be good to go.

Of course I recommend the former. If you aren’t on a mission to compete with the Bekkah Valley, stay small. Trim the fat. Scale down. Grow fewer, better flowers and charge twice as much for them.

People won’t pay that much? You aren’t good enough.

There are growers that get much higher prices for their product than you do. It’s going to become more common. The days of the thousand dollar ounce of flower in the face of overwhelming amounts of concentrated mids are coming, and the ones that hit the mark first are likely to have a sustainable strong, independent family business that lasts for generations.

So, whatever you do, don’t grow mids. There’s already enough and there will always be enough farmers who only care about money and they will always grow enough mids for the ignorant.

So get out there and grow some fire!
Love and peace,

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One of my early business “mentors” in the music industry, who turned out to be a mentor in everything to avoid, used to tell me that he had all these industry favors stored away to use when we really needed them, and he didn’t want to use them “too soon.” He also loved to call such a favor “firing a bullet.” Well, that business failed and I can tell you right now that holding those bullets back wasn’t doing anything to prevent that.

If you have an advantage to play in your industry, or a proverbial bullet, fire it! What are you waiting for? Life doesn’t happen tomorrow, it happens today and waiting to trigger an opportunity is just not wise especially in our rapid-fire culture. Maybe that saving favors philosophy worked in 1950 and maybe it still works in certain circles, but today, fire your bullets and pull in the favors when you need them.

On the flip side of that, make sure you show up when a favor is pulled from you. Don’t be stingy now, if you want to take, you need to give.

I hope that today you get out there and fire those bullets you have been saving.

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The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is a federal government organization. The fact that cannabis remains on the schedule of illegal and dangerous drugs limits it from most patenting and trademarking of businesses in and related to such an “illegal” industry.

Let’s look at how this works. The USPTO is the department that allows US citizens to register a name and/or a visual mark for a business that can be a logo or an icon in a particular category or industry in order to protect that business from being copied and business being done under their name. This way if you started a restaurant call Knobby’s Salads in California and were planning on going national within a few years, no one could use the same name and make money off of your reputation in New York. If they did, you could sue them and they would owe you.

Categories

Now, let’s look at the categories. You can register a name in the category of textiles, or advertising, or education and entertainment, you can enter the beverage category, on and on and on it goes. There are 45 main categories with subcategories. In fact here is a great article on NOLO.com about all of the categories.

Guess what? There is no “Cannabis” category. You can’t register a dispensary or a grow operation. So what have people been doing? They have been registering as “retail” and “flower shop” and “farmer” and things of that nature. This can be risky. If the USPTO catches you being a little shady and not forthcoming, they will deny your trademark and you will have to start over, like, choose a new name.

Whoops.

What else have they been doing? Companies will literally start a t-shirt company with the same name as their farm in order to register the name in the T-shirt category, the printing category and the advertising category. Some companies have been known to start as many little ventures as possible in order to register their name in as many categories as possible. This is less risky as it is more honest. This strategy will also make it so that they will be more likely to get their trademark in the cannabis category once it opens up. This strategy is also not cheap as you have to pay the fee for every category you register in.

So in conclusion, this is another reason why you need to heed the guidance of my four posts on Trademarking and Naming.

Post 1
Post 2
Post 3
Post 4

You would also do well to hire someone who is great at branding as well as a great trademark and patent attorney so you can nail this once and for all, the first time you do it rather than scrambling and starting over again and again.

Good luck out there making a scene in the world and I hope this post helps you or someone you know get started on the right foot.

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When we are working on our brand, whether it be our personal brand or our company brand, we tend to focus on all the details of how awesome we are. As we should. That’s how we can show depth and breadth. That’s where extra value can show up. We all like to show up with extra value.

However, sometimes we rabbit trail on details that are not related enough to our core even though it is very exciting. For this reason, it is always helpful to have a process for revisiting your core in every detail you are adding.

You might be an incredible host and really good at Emceeing events. Adding public speaking to teach others about your skill not only adds value and teaches your customers about what you do and why it matters, it also rounds out your MC skills with a different skillset of speaking. Also, you will gain a tribe of other people like you who will inspire you and vice versa, which will help you get better as well.

However, when it comes to learning architecture and space design and worrying about how people are moving around in the space where you are Emceeing, you might be better off finding someone who focuses on that so that you can focus on the content.

The way to understand how to set goals and approve the growth decisions you are making is to always refer back and strip away the details to see if the core truths relate.

Content of communication and style of delivery for hosting a party is very different that creating wayfinding and flow in a space to get people to be in the right place and mood to receive that content and style at the right time.

Of course the MC and the architect would do well to learn language that allows them to communicate back and forth so that the MC understands how the architect can help their content and vice versa.

This is a core function of the practice of minimalism. Take away the unnecessary details and reveal the inner kernel of truth of your brand. Once you do that, you can see the relationships, the needs, the attributes you need you gather to round out your skill.

This reminds me of Role Playing Games. You can’t make a super character. You can’t have a wizard that is also really a strong warrior AND a sneaky assassin AND a charismatic thief.

You have to choose what your character is at the beginning and as you go through the game and level up, you choose the attributes to strengthen and the ones to leave weak.

You then shore up your weaknesses by adding members to your adventure party. A wizard travels with a rogue scout and a warrior and a thief. This is why we have organizations and companies. This is also why, if you are a freelancer, you need a network of people that you can refer, so you can always take care of any need even if it is not your skillset.

Strip away the details, remember the main attributes of your character (brand) and make sure you are adding the right skills and party members as you level up. If you find that you are doing something useless, be gentle on yourself, it’s totally okay to get distracted. Just put it down and refocus your energy.

Happy Sunday and enjoy focusing your efforts.

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The concept of shipping comes from product manufacturing. Shipping is part of your brand. It the moment when the customer or reader gets to finally interact with you.

Getting your product out the door is hard. Whether it is a blog post, or a tchotchke, or a new car model, getting the prototype out of your head and out of your shop and into the hands of people who can evaluate it, this is the most valuable moment of your branding process.

There is a trick here. When to ship? It has to be good enough, and yet, we know that if we sit and polish more and more, we can make it better and better. This never ends. How do we decide when to stop polishing and ship?

Deadlines.

Calling out deadlines in advance, setting goals that feel a little difficult to achieve, but not too difficult and shipping regardless of the state of the prototype on deadline is important.

A lot happens when we add a deadline. It creates pressure. It creates accountability. The drive of creating expectation and meeting it is strong. We have to meet the deadline and tell the story of why our prototype is not as polished as we want. We have to allow for the criticism that comes from people seeing our product as unfinished.

This is the reason to do something that has a daily deadline. Something that is a gift to the world. Something that is adding value to our humanity without a need for return. This is why I write this blog. I alluded to this in my post yesterday. I have set a goal to post a blog every day. I don’t always. But I try. It’s the first thing I do every day. I wake up and my goal is to come up with something fresh that is present in my life that I am processing and see a way forward and share that learning with you.

The second level of the blog that is a little less obvious is that I also create all of the graphics for the headers. This can sometimes be the most challenging as the writing itself is already hard, and creating a relatable visual quickly makes it feel more than difficult.

I try to go from concept to finished writing and graphic in less than an hour if I can. It usually goes a little long, but I get as close as I can.
The reason I am explaining all of this is so you might feel inspired to do the same. Maybe it’s a daily sketch on your instagram. Maybe it’s writing a blog about your relationship. Maybe it’s doing yoga everyday and posting the challenging pose you are working on. The point is, if you tell your audience that you are going to show up a certain way and you create an expectation of shipping, then you will be accountable to show up and ship.

This shipping creates a feedback loop for us. A reflection of what we are saying, what we are making. It gives our audience the opportunity to help us shape our practice and make it better with us. More importantly it allows us to see ourselves through their lens more easily. Even if they never give us direct feedback, we are automatically gaining more empathy through going through the process of ship, refine, ship, refine, ship, refine.

So, in summation, I hope that you are inspired to ship something today. Something with meaning and value that will make the world a better place. On top of that I hope that you reflect on what you ship and that you ship it again tomorrow, refined by your own reflection and the reflection of others.

Enjoy creating and shipping and if you are inspired, ship it to me!

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It’s a good question. Many people think design is the science of making something look cool.

While great design almost always looks attractive, this is not the primary goal of design.

Design is the process of identifying a problem and finding the best possible solution to that problem.

A graphic designer works on visual problems. Does the graphic say what the words say? Can it be understood at a glance? Does it make people look in a visually crowded space?

An architect works on the problems of how people move around in spaces that we build. Where do you put your coat when you enter? How does the shape and arrangement of the room make people move around in the the space?

An industrial designer solves the problems of how the human body interacts with physical things to make simple things like chairs and spoons work even better or sometimes just differently than before.

Often, we miss the mark of design by focusing on how these things look when we should be focusing on how they work.

I find it helpful to ask the big questions in any design process again and again no matter what stage of the process I am in. Questions like, “Why are we doing this,” and “What is it for,” are the main two I am constantly jumping back to. We all get caught up in our own ideas and standing back and looking at our designs from afar and asking the big questions can get us back on the path to truth.

If you are interested in a very deep exploration of the basics of design thinking, read “Design as Art” by Bruno Munari. It is a fantastic book on design and why it is different than art and it is a monumental classic in design thinking.

Have a nice day and happy designing!

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I had no idea when I was 16 years old in that basement smoking a joint, listening to Phish’s album Rift for the first time, that the band I fell in love with that day would be such a great model for modern business.

Unbeknownst to most people in the music industry and for that matter the rest of the world, in the eighties and nineties, while the whole world was busy hanging on to what had been built by the Industrial Age, Phish saw the future.

Phish built a business around a tribe. Something small. Instead of making 20 cents on a record sale and trying to do that 10 million times a year to make money, Phish built a business around getting a small handful of people to support them with thousands of dollars per year at live concert experiences. Of course, they weren’t the first to do this, they were really copying the Dead. But where the Dead were more a group of ragtag hippies just having fun and were known for shabby business, especially in the early days, Phish built an empire.

Not that long ago there was a white paper put out by Harvard Business School showing that a Sole Proprietor can make a hundred thousand a year by getting one thousand people to spend a hundred dollars a year and that with the internet, that is easier than ever. Phish understood this concept innately before the internet and built a tribe of thousands who would support them no matter what.

Phish was creating the kinds of tight communities thirty years ago that the internet is now producing through groups on social media and chat platforms. They built a fully independent nomadic economy that lived on the road and in the parking lots of venues and cities around the nation.

Phish created a world and an experience that their fans never wanted to end and still don't. There are fans that spend ten thousand dollars a year and more on tickets and merchandise. A lot of them. Like thousands and thousands of them.

Our challenge as freelancers, business people and entrepreneurs is that we want the fast option. The Phish Model is not fast. It is slow and dedicated. It focuses relentlessly on the core why, faces big challenges and grows and evolves over time like any good relationship.

So in the end, refocusing on our why, and narrowing our vision to what gets our tribe truly inspired up is a surefire path to long-lasting success in anything we do. It takes time and there will be major bumps along the way but our determination and dedication will not fail us. In this refocusing we find renewed energy to hack away at the big mountains in our way to building our own tribe.

Have a nice day and I hope you enjoy focusing your efforts in your life as I do.

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As a graphic and brand designer this is my #1 rule I live by.

What does it mean? It means that we should always work on figuring what the function needs to be, and the best ways to make that function work.

One of the best examples of a beautiful function first design is the spoon. The spoon has a sensual sort of shape to it. No one set out to make it that way, all of the curves and parts are designed to do one thing. Bring liquid from a bowl on a table to your mouth without spilling.

This is no small feat. It is a miracle of geometry and physics that was produced over hundreds of years by many different designers.

The point is, the spoon is a perfect example of a function first design, it looks great because it works so well with the human body.

In a similar way, when designing branding and graphics, if the need is considered most important and the function of communication is considered first, then the graphic or brand is far more likely to work.

In other words the question “What is it for?” Is far more important than, “what does it look like?” Focus on what it’s for with reckless abandon and in the end it will look great.

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Whats inside what's inside the jar? No, it's not a typo. I did ask what's inside what inside

When we encounter design, we often ooh and ah at the branding and the packaging and the trim job and the "bag appeal." Why don't we more often admire better qualities such as the ecologically friendly nature of the packaging or even more important, where the water comes from that waters your plants and how much it takes to irrigate your crop? The reality us, underneath all of the shiny foil our perception of a brand is really about what we really believe the product is made of. Not only philosophically but also tangibly.

Enter the queen of water friendly crops, dry farmed agricultural cannabis. That's right friends. No water. In the right location, cannabis succeeds incredibly well at being dry farmed with nearly zero surface watering.  The cannabis tap root finds it all from the ground. If you don't believe me, ask Sunshine Johnson or Chrystal Ortiz.

The design thinking gets really fun here because it can impact large scale agriculture. Regenerative farming is here and we would do well to start designing our laws and infrastructure around it.

Dry farming prime ag locations? You can't dry farm just anywhere, it takes some specific ecoligical scenarios to be readily available and the farmers doing it need to be supported.

From a state perspective, identifying dry farm prime ag and giving it preference for cannabis permitting because of it's ability to  make better cannabis on less resource is incredible important for many reasons.

Saving water resources by not extracting water from surface water systems.
Solving issues arising from drainage and leeching of even the most organic of compost.
Rising quality of cannabis by the nature of it growing directly in the native soil as opposed to lots of imported dirt
Creating a better understanding of terroir and Appalachia through more direct association of plant to local environment and soil.

This is just the beginning. There are so many reasons to find and support sun grown, dry farmed, regenerative cannabis that when we have/find the option, we ought never choose anything else.

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There’s a reason quality alcohols come in cans, brown bottles and have very little to no air in the packaging. Light and oxygen.

Light and oxygen degrade the freshness of our products. 2020 should be the year of no more clear glass bottles for cannabis. We should be packaging our cannabis in brown glass, or even better, completely opaque. This is because light degrades all the chemical compounds in the plant, so the darker the glass, the closer the flavor and experience will be, according to the growers finished cure.

As far as oxygen, I haven’t seen a great way to reduce the amount of air inside a package of flower without crushing the flowers. In this regard, concentrates are much easier to control, and there is room for innovation for flower. Filling a container completely with concentrate that is not liquid will usually result in a dried top layer that seals in the rest of the concentrate and keeps it separate from any air in the jar, however little there is. This will not work with liquid as any air will mix into the liquid over time, causing oxidization.

Traditional hash in the form of a temple ball handles all of this perfectly, and it doesn’t need to be in a jar at all. A nice ball of hash is self preserving, the oils on the outside of the ball form a protective layer for the rest of the ball so you can keep it for months and even years while retaining the terpenes and cannabinoids in a much more stable state. Of course, this is dependent on a little care for the ball. It needs to be kept dark, cool and dry.

There is a need for preservation of the compounds we love. Coupled with the competition that will enter the market when global import and export becomes real, it leads me to believe that the smart concentrate makers are going to focus more and more on dry sieving and ice water techniques to produce their concentrates. Not only does it solve many packaging problems that we have, it’s an overall better product for shelf life than anything modern cannabis tech has come up with to date. Also, the processing techniques require far less machinery and intense scientific knowledge to operate. This means the investment in hash making goes towards artisan makers and people rather than industrial processes.

The real challenge here as usual is the storytelling and branding and education on the consumer side that lets people know why traditional hash is better on a shelf than almost any other product. As per usual, most people in America just don’t know. It’s not our fault, people spend lot’s of money teaching us the wrong things. We don’t even have a really good grasp of our place in the timeline of cannabis. Nor do we have any understanding of the global cannabis trade especially as it relates to history and where we are in time.

There is so much to teach, and so much misinformation, so many fads… It seems like everyday there’s a new way to consume or misrepresent cannabis that degrades the nature of the plant and the medicine it provides.

A simple solution to start moving in the right direction is to change the color of the jar you use to package your weed and tell your customer why. This will spark a cultural interest that will make change much like the craft beer and wine movements impacted the alcohol industry.

As always, thanks for reading, and I hope you get inspired to get out there and Stir the Pot.

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The Symbols

In this fourth and final post on naming, it’s time to cover the symbols. What do they mean and when can you use them? Only the ™ and the ® have relevance to business name defense. The copyright would apply if you had made original art for your logo or brand that you didn’t want anyone else selling as art. So, here we go!

™ The Trademark symbol. This is a symbol that is free to use if you have a mark worth using (see previous three posts). You don’t have to register anything to use it legally. It is a non binding signifier that your mark should not be copied. If you know your name is original and unique and you have a custom drawn logotype or word mark than you should put this mark next to your logo. You can set this mark in most fonts by holding option(alt on pc) and hitting the number 2 on your keyboard.

® The Registered Trademark symbol. This is a symbol that you are only legally allowed to use if you have gone through the trademarking process with the USPTO and been awarded your trademark. If you can use it, you should. This character is set by holding option (alt on pc) and hitting the letter r.

© The Copyright symbol. This little guy has (almost) nothing to do with what we have been talking about, but I decided to include it even though it probably needs its own post. This is used for artwork and music and anything where you make copies. Every artist owns the copyright to any original work they put out the moment they get the art out of their head and make the first “copy.” It is smart to document your art when you make it. Timestamp it somehow. There is the legend of bands who used to record a song and then mail a tape and the lyrics to themselves and not open it so they had an official piece of evidence with a date on it. Now, you just publish your songs online and that date stamps it. A copyright isn’t something you have to go through a process for, you just need to document the copies so you can prove you were the first to make an artwork, if it ever comes to that. You can set this character by holding option (alt on pc) g. This is why the new media model is put out more, faster, and don't let it sit on your hard drive. Publish it!

That's about all I have on that. I hope you have found this series on naming helpful, if you know someone creating a new product or service, share these with them as they will find them extremely helpful.  I wish I would have know about all this 20 years ago when I started my first business.

Peace and Love and Happy Building!

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What about the url?

This is where things can get tricky and fun. The web domain name, or url, now plays a role in proving your trademark to the USPTO. You see, there is still a lot to explain about things the USPTO are looking for in your name.

Timing. You see, part of the reason for this law of trademarking is that two people can have similar ideas at the same time and these rules keep people from naming things the same way which help consumers differentiate and protects business people from being copied and stolen from. A url can help your right to the name in this way…

Let’s say I wanted to start a t-shirt company and I wanted to call it Wildhair Shirts. Before going to the USPTO the first thing I would do is Google the name and see what comes up. If nothing specific to that name comes up, my chances of getting  a good url and this name registered with the USPTO are going way up.

Then, I would go to my favorite domain purchasing and basic web hosting site, Namecheap, and I would search for wildhairshirts.com and see if it was available. If it was, I would buy it, as that is a great sign that the name is not being used by anyone.

Now, let’s say I bought the relevant urls (buying as many urls that cover bases like wildhairshirts.com, .org, .net and wildhairtshirts.com and other relevant names is a good idea for the same reasons that I would get the first) and built a published site for them describing my company and future products while I start working on the business plan that ends up taking me a couple of years to actually fully launch.

Within that time, someone else starts a company by the same name in a different state. They have a website called whclothingincorporated.com because I bought all the name specific ones before they launched…

Now, in our story, we went ahead and registered our business with the USPTO, and our other Wild Hair Shirt company didn’t register federally so no one is the wiser. Everything seems good. It has all worked out.

Until the other Wildhair starts to get big. They started local, but they grew, and when they expanded to a national market, they noticed me, as I have them. Now they want the registered trademark and they believe they started before me because they believe they used the name first. Now I am going to court. They want to prove that they had the name first, and that they were doing business first (It’s true, they sold a shirt before I did.) and that even though they hadn’t registered the trademark, they had it in use before I did. If they prove that, I will lose the rights to use the name and will be forced to rebrand. If they fail in proving that, then I will be awarded the rights to the name.

One of the pieces of evidence that a Judge will look at is, who had the urls first and who published a live, relevant website first. Since I was the first to get the urls and the site published, and I did the fed trademark work as well, I am likely to win. Notice I said likely. Nothing is guaranteed here. Even if I think I did everything right, the judge could possibly see something a different way and I could lose. This is why, despite these informative posts, I will always say “GET AN IP ATTORNEY!”

The attorney has more experience, and knows more about how to make your name as defensible as possible. In an ideal world, you have a designer like me on your team who knows all of the ins and outs of making marks visually distinctive, and you also have an ip attorney making sure those marks are defensible in a court of law.

The moral of the story is: If you have a great idea, and a good name that you know is unique and likely to be defensible, and you have googled for it, and searched and can’t find anything, and you have searched for the url and it is available… BUY IT. But don’t JUST buy it. Put some kind of website up describing what you are doing and the intention of the company. It doesn’t have to look good. It just has to work. WIX or Squarespace or Wordpress or a whole host of others will help you build a site for free. You just have to pay for the connection to the customer url. A published website is stamped and dated material and will help you defend your name if anyone ever tries to take it. Don’t just take my word for it, call an IP attorney and at least get a consultation. If they tell you something different, let me know and I will update these blog posts, otherwise they will likely just give you even more info to chew on and process BEFORE choosing all of this.

Peace and Love and Happy Building!

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As I said, this would be a multi part series. Why? Because there is so much to cover. There is a lot of detail to the subject and even in this multi post series could not possibly cover all of it. That’s why there are lawyers who devote their entire lives to the subject. If you are really doing this yourself I highly recommend getting a trademark attorney at least to help you. Some of the best money you can spend.

If you’re like me though, and you like to do everything yourself. It is possible even though it can be very frustrating.

Here we go:

What's in a name?

In another post, I wrote about the fact that the USPTO doesn’t like three things in a federal trademark application: Proper Names, Geographic Location and generic words in the industry and category the trademark is being applied.

In my rather long post, I did not talk about the exceptions very much. So let’s jump in to some reason why you may ignore the USPTO and apply for your rule breaking name.

The first exception is, if you intend to stay local, and you are the first with the name in your area, and you can use your geographic wordmark without legally offending someone else's, then it doesn't matter at all. Register your business name with the state you live in and you are done. Otherwise, start over using the concept outlined in the last half of this post.

The proper name exception is similar, you need a pretty unique name first of all, and then you have to be first to register a business in the category you are in. Once it's gone, it's gone. Imagine trying to open a national chain of anything called "Smith's." The trademarks are gone. They don't exist. Except for few brief seconds where a new category opens up.

As for generic words, there aren't really any good times for that. Black Rubber Tire Company is not a brand, it's just what the thing is, no more, no less. Talon Tires, however speaks to the idea of grip, grab, bite and if you have great tires for sale well then, we have a winner.

This is why the words, “green, leaf, canna Mari, Mary, kind, dope, weed, etc,” just have to go from the cannabis industry. Go ahead and google things like “nature’s solution” or “greenleaf dispensary” and see how many results you get.

On the other hand, google “Hippie House Cannabis” or “Sculpture Dispensary” and see how many results you get. Biiiig difference. The last two, I made up on the spot, and I knew they were original before googling to make sure.

The point is, use abstract concepts instead of generic, industry specific concepts and associations! Do you happen to love playing baseball and as you get older you find that cannabis help you continue to enjoy playing even when it hurts a little? Then it would make sense to go for a name like Home Run Cannabis Co. Go ahead and google it. It doesn’t exist yet. Why? Because the relationship is so personal and unique that no one else would think of it.

Ok, I just gave away three solid names for free, Go ahead and take them, or better, take the knowledge and start creating names that mean a lot to you and translate how you feel, and then you will be onto something. Remember also, this is only ONE way to approach naming. A simple google search for "how to name my business" and you will find many many many posts by many companies and people outlining other aspects. You would be wise to do such a search for a couple hours and learn from others as well.

In the next post, I will add the next layer which will really reveal whether your name is worth chasing after to begin with. How to search for your url and how it impacts your trademark.

Happy Brand Building!

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What is a trademark anyway?

A trademark is a unique name and or symbol that is defensible in a court of law from use by anyone else.  This is the first of a two part series.

There are three things the US Patent and Trademark office doesn’t like, and I have distilled that info for you here.

1. Generic terms for the industry/category. For cannabis this means no green, canna, flower, leaf, seed, CBD, THC, hemp or any other common or generic term directly related.

2. Locations. Humboldt, Cali, Oregon, Denver or any of those will not be federally defensible once there is a Cannabis Trademark Category.

3. No proper names. Sorry, but John Smith Dispensary just won’t hold up. If you have the most unique name in the world, the USPTO might give it to you, but it’s a gamble, you would probably have to do a lot of work to hide that it’s your name… In this case hire a trademark attorney no matter what!

I know some of you are jumping up and down upset and defensive about your name and you don’t want to change or admit that you have a bad name.

There are exceptions. When you combine one of these with something specific, it can work. I did it with Barney Design Co. Mostly because I happened to be first. I got lucky AND I knew what I was doing. Also, I am small, chances are your ambition with your cannabis business are much bigger on a customer scale than me.

But rather than flirt with danger, I would like to share with you what you should be trying to do when naming.

Go for the abstract. Maybe you love Persian rugs so you call your company Ornate Concentrates. Maybe you like the concept of going deep in life and you grow two strains and two strains only, better than anyone so you call it Mariana’s Garden (get it?) Then there's Shady Oak, Icarus Feather, Steel and Denim. You get the idea. The less obvious and directly connected the better. The crux to this is there does need to be a connection for you, no matter how abstract it may be. There needs to be a story. It can’t be random and made up, unless you are Steven King, then you can create an alternate fantasy reality and people will buy into it.

This is the first step to brainstorming a list of names. Did you screw up and name your business California Cannabis or Holistic Wellness Center? There is no better time to change than now. If you need help, I am always here and any brand designer worth a damn knows this stuff so ask them! You live in the age of the internet where you can know as much as the professional, at least enough to ask the right questions to see if they know.

If you have a great name and you want to trademark it, I would advise hiring a trademark and copyright attorney to make sure. David Branfman at Branfman Mayfield Bustarde Reichenthal LLP is a fantastic and affordable attorney who has done a lot in Cannabis and has worked in trademarking and copywriting for a long time. He will work hard to help you create a defensible name that you can protect.

Conversely, if you are super savvy, need to save money and have time, you can register your name yourself. The USPTO is a bit cumbersome and some of the forms and rules don’t make a lot of sense to those of us who don’t speak legalese but I have several friends who have registered their own trademark so it is possible, although I will say they all just about pulled their hair out.

Anyways, more info in the next post,

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To erase or not to erase?

When I was a kid, maybe in about third grade, I had an art class where a guest artist was brought into the classroom one Friday to teach us. I remember being excited because I was drawing every spare moment of every day and had been for a couple of years.

In part of the lesson the teacher showed us two pieces. One where the artist had clearly drawn without erasing. I remember the image was a very natural, flowy line drawn form of a woman in a voluminous dress and was very detailed. The other piece was a series of very black balls where the artist had erased the highlight so there was a very bright contrast between the highlight and the shadow of each ball, making them look like black steel or something. She asked us to raise our hands as to which one we liked. The class was almost universally drawn to the balls. She then asked a question "Is it ok that the artist use the eraser in his drawing to achieve the effect? Should he not have been able to achieve the same result without the eraser?"

I remember thinking emphatically, no. I remember thinking that it was a greater skill to have drawn such a beautiful form without erasing. Sadly, the teacher was not able to correct my misinterpretation of the lesson that day. The point is this, the lesson really was that both were great ways of attaining different goals. The pieces were very different and therefore the path to the end result was also very different.

In other words, one piece was made completely through processes of addition. The other, however, made its impact through a process of subtraction which gave it a certain striking character that was visually more impressive than the other because of its strong contrast. What am I getting at here? Surely, it has more to do than just a couple of processes of drawing and a lesson on contrast. It does, although I must admit, this analogy breaks here because it really just reminds me of what I really want to talk about rather than being exactly analogous...

This is what I want to really get at. I often tell people I have a philosophy about iteration and editing. I like to say that you should never put the creator and the editor in the same room. It's not an absolute never, but I think it's a generally a good idea to keep them separate and here's why.
The creative person is very sensitive. I know, I am one. They love the things that they make. Everything they make is a baby to them. They put their heart and soul into it. The creative needs safe space to create relentlessly without being stopped or told that their ideas are stupid. If you keep the editor from talking to them while they are creating, they will create more and better ideas.

I'm not just talking about two people in a working environment. I am talking about the creative and the editor in your head. We all have them, the angel and the demon. The one telling us that we suck and the other telling us that we're great. The trick is, we need them both, but not at the same time. We get too confused by their back and forth.

If you give the creator free rein and let them create more and better ideas, then you give the editor more and better ideas to edit. On the flip side, keeping the creative out of the room when the editor is at work is very important. When the editor is cutting and killing the darlings and babies of the creator, the creator will get sensitive and defensive and want to keep ideas that might not be that great. Let the editor cut at will after the creator has fully fleshed out all of his ideas.

This is how we arrive at our best work. Let both sides have their day by preventing both of them from getting in the others way.

06 Form

Remain neutral to start. You can always add, but once form is established, it is hard to change. Forming out of neutrality, slowly over time, allows for evolution.

We are not rigid. We can admit wrongs and learn to become better. Better at relating our designs to their intended recipients, better at empathy, better at everything.

The recipient of our designs should also form their story into the design. If our design has too much personality there is no room for others. That’s just plain rude.

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07 Culture

I am all for breaking rules. We take our culture to new places that way. However, most of culture is built out of what has been built before us. Respecting the tradition and history of design is more important than being original.

Originality after all is mostly the remixing and innovating of tradition. We all stand on the shoulders of giants and our designs succeed when we remember that.

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08 Synthesis

Experience with a broad spectrum of techniques, mediums and applications is exceedingly helpful in design. It enhances our empathy. Synthesis begets synthesis. The more we synthesize, the more rapidly we can expand into new areas of thinking and bring in new information and skills.

On the other side, design is the ultimate discipline of synthesis. The principles of design apply everywhere. Comprehensive understanding of design enables more immediate synthesis of anything.

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09 Minimalism

Simplicity is power.

Say it with less.

Same for graphics.

Simple messages work better than complex designs.

The relief of space makes our design stand out.

Silence defines the sound.

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10 Permanence

We are against the culture of obsolescence. We make designs that last. We make things that get better with use, age and the beauty of patina.

We despise momentary trends.

We prefer simple shapes, classic typography and timeless stories. We strive for this in design because it is good for our minds, the planet, our economies and our overconsumptive nature.

We like design to be clean, strong and lasting.

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11 Responsibility

Design is the profession of responsibility.

Design goes into the world and makes change.

Bad design makes change we don’t want or need.

Good design makes change that is appropriate and useful.

Our responsibility is to ourselves, our integrity, the quality of the project, and to the public who will use our designs at large.

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05 Function

Design is function. It is mathematical. It solves problems. When we focus on function and solving the problem relentlessly, we arrive at forms that are astoundingly appropriate, and therefore, beautiful.

When function is top priority, design decisions become easier. The function is the meaning, it speaks to us about materials, color, texture, voice, type, lifestyle, culture and more.

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As Massimo Vignelli said, “God is in the details.” It is the discipline of process that reveals the details. Creativity does not come through glimpses of inspiration. It is the dedication of consistently applying skill and knowledge with a sprinkle of bravery that brings forth magic.

Process is one of the keys to great design.

Process means we keep going. We don’t stop. We keep digging and exploring.

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03 Engage

If we have understanding in our designs and we are communicating, but not touching lives, minds and hearts, then we have missed the mark. This does not mean we stoop to whatever current fad we can to obtain a moment of engagement. We have to find the kernel of truth in our design, because when we find that, we will touch the tribe that we are solving the problem for, creating change, leading to engagement that was not there before.

By standing firm in the river of fads with conviction for what we stand for, we become timeless trendsetters and connect with the best of humanity.

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02 Communicate

Understanding is useless without language. If we cannot share our understanding with each other then it is in vain. There must be thorough study of language in every design problem. Not only design language, but also the language surrounding the problem itself.

A robust language used properly creates consistency, which is paramount to any great design.

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01 Understand

Every part of a design problem must be holistically understood before design can begin.

The entire subject must be fully grasped in order to translate the meaning of the design to the observer.

It is the job of the designer to understand the business and economies of the client fully. This demands an immense amount of collaboration and sharing. That’s the fun part.

To understand is the beginning of great design.

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People throw the word around a lot. Brand. What is it? A custom shaped piece of metal that you get really hot and use to burn the shape into the flesh of an animal? No, that's a branding iron...

So is it the mark left on an animal? Yes. That is exactly how we think of brand and brand identity. But it's not quite right still.

We think of brand identity as the tool used to imprint the brand on someones mind like a branding iron. On the other side we think of the brand as the impression we leave on someone when they interact with our identity.

So close. So very close. What's missing is the understanding that it is not we, the brand and marketing people who make the impression. Rather, it is the people we seek to impress. They do it themselves. That's what gets scary. As designers, it's the moment we lose control of our work.

You see, our brand is how others choose to see us. It's the stories they tell themselves. We have no control over that. Not if we choose to be moral people, unlike those who work in government propaganda... But I digress. Sure, we can influence these stories, and we do, but ultimately what our audience thinks of us is up to them.

So what's the trick? How do we get people to understand us properly?

There is no trick. There is no easy way. You have to wake up and do the hard work of being communicative and transparent. You have to quiet your inner Sasquatch who wants to run and hide and stay under the cover of the infinite forest. You have to take the risks of exposing yourself in order to be loved. You have to let the haters hate and do it with poise.

Then, even more importantly, (actually you need to start here,) you need to listen. Listen to the feedback. Hear what your audience has to say to you. If they aren't talking, ask them to. If you don't even have one person in your audience, keep practicing your communication until you do.

Then process the feedback and go at it again. This is how we get better at representing ourselves.

The biggest companies can have the toughest time doing this. Inside of them, you have lots of people who love the company and are showing up, doing good work and serving their customers, wishing that their customers could see them and understand how much love they have for the customer (branding iron). Outside, you have a customer that mistrusts big companies and doesn't really believe the previous sentence at all, in fact quite the opposite, but they know they need the services provided so they feel at the mercy of the big company (brand). So the brand of that company is shit. The best in their field have realized that they way out is through.

There are companies who have survived this distrust. Think Coke and Mc'Donald's. For forty years or so, they have sat right next to tobacco and alcohol when it comes to how we as society regard them. Junk food, we call it. But those companies got square with the idea by saying, "yeah, we know it's junk for your health, but would life be any fun without it?" People understand that. Life without ever having a coke? Lame.

Okay Coke, you're right, life is no fun without you, we all like to party at some point. So society respond and says, "okay, well, if you are going to make money off of fun, and admit that it's not healthy if over indulged, we want you to spend some of your money teaching people how to be healthy." Coke says okay and starts supporting athletics and healthy food programs and buying organic juice companies...

Now what we have here is a giant society wide conversation that Coke is having with all of us. And when they do it right, they are really listening to us.

So at the end of the day, you might say, "I'm not Coke," and there are all these reasons why you don't need to or can't communicate with your audience because you don't have marketing, pr, graphics, film, or photography skills at your fingertips and you aren't even that great at the internet, in fact, you might hate facebook and instagram and you might even think it's ruining us all.

Okay, squatchy. Listen here. You DO have all of those things. You can write like the rest of us. You can speak into a camera on a livestream like the rest of us. You don't have to have all of the skills. You just have to start sharing and listening to our responses. Don't look for the fluff of your friends telling you "great job!" Ignore that stuff. Instead, look for the ones who call you out. Look for those who point out something missing. Take the criticism and refine your idea. We want to help you make it better. We want to feel like we are a part of something bigger than us and you are building that thing, so tell us about it!

Also, consume as much info about this as you can. Read and listen to people like Simon Sinek,  Seth Godin, Brene Brown, Gary Vee and Tim Ferris. Follow the people they follow. Learn and grow.

While you learn and grow, start sharing today. Share your Identity with us and let us tell you what your brand is and we can go from there.

Have a wonderful day and I can't wait to see you out there in the world!

Many people are rushing to get in on the Cannabis Industry. It has been referred to often as the "Green Rush." For illustration, in a matter of days, the largest cannabis trade show in the world will flood Las Vegas, Nevada. Out of the thirty thousand or more people there, most will know very little about the history and legacy of the cannabis plant or its potential yet they will be seeking financial gain from the plant. Meanwhile, there is a concurrent movement happening. A movement referred to by Skunk Magazine as the "Green Renaissance" A movement to change the face of the world for the better by living closer to nature and the natural processes of the earth.

I am not here to belittle those who are here for the Green Rush. Quite the opposite. I think it is up to us, the veterans of Cannabis, to teach the "noobs" what's up. And it is up to those who are new to humble themselves and start reading and asking a lot of questions before they decide how to be involved. If you want to make money with cannabis, you first need to understand what cannabis wants to do to help you.

For starters let's ask this. Have you read the Emperor Wears no Clothes by Jack Herer? By the way, it's Herer like Terror, just so ya know... Is your brain full of the information contained within that book? If so, why are you so focused on the "cannabis industry" when you should be thinking about the hemp industry?

The information contained within that book alone is enough to start tens of thousands of entrepreneurial efforts in biodegradable plastics, cosmetics, papers, fabrics, adhesives, building materials, and more. Basically, all of the products that we use in modern society can be made from the hemp plant. Yet, for the last seventy years we have been infatuated mostly with the medicinal effects of the plant. This is one of the fundamental shift points we need to focus on.

We need to focus our efforts on supporting businesses that are working in these areas. I have mentioned before that we should be replacing our swag at trade shows with hemp products. How about packaging? I have been looking for hemp plastic packaging for some time, and I have only found one company doing it. Sana Packaging out of Colorado. Kind of unacceptable when Henry Ford was making hemp plastic panels for cars 90 years ago. If you know of more companies doing this, please let me know. Especially a mylar like plastic that is hemp-based and biodegradable, is anyone even trying?

How about paper? My friend Erica Halverson has been working on commercial hemp paper products for quite some time and has everything needed to launch a company with the potential to disrupt the entire paper industry. Where are the investors crawling out of the woodwork to help her do it? I hear about so many investors that want to get involved in cannabis throwing their money into a dispensary or a grow operation when they could start a whole new line of manufacturing processes that could singlehandedly take on tree paper... That's like buying a dive bar in a small town when you have the opportunity to make the bottles that every drink company on the planet needs and wants for the same investment.

The point is this. We are at a flux point in human history. Some very bad people have been making very bad decisions for quite some time. We have the opportunity right now to be at the ground level of a real renaissance. We are trying to eject ourselves from oil, and plastics, and cutting down forests and we have the answer in our hands. The question is what are YOU going to do? What product switch are you going to make? What product are you going to design? It is up to YOU to have no compromise. Set a standard. Be a leader. Show the rest of the world how it can be done. Please, for all of our sakes.

Yesterday I wrote a post about the industry's need to race to the top when it comes to craft cannabis and the small grower.

My dear friend Richard Eastman reminded me about the other side of the spectrum. Free Weed and the end of Corporate Greed.

I am also very passionate about this subject, as I have seen first hand the impact cannabis has on so many medical conditions. I have also seen the impact cannabis has on the health and wellness of people who are not ill, if used properly.

The question is, how to get there? How do we get free weed without eliminating the craft market I spoke about yesterday? I think the answer is simple. Maybe.

Treat raw cannabis as a vegetable. #acannabisplantineverygarden

Our cultural understanding of cannabis needs to shift. Juicing raw cannabis leaves and flowers everyday is one of the healthiest things anyone can do for themselves and their family. Raw, fresh cannabinoids are non-psychoactive and treat many of the health and wellness issues so many are looking to alleviate and then some.

One of the challenges is that we need a national education campaign on this fact while educating people that if they cook the same cannabis it will change the properties and unless the person cooking the cannabis really knows their stuff, you will get wildly unpredictable results.

If more people in our communities were growing cannabis as a vegetable, then those who need free access could more easily obtain it. And no, I don't think it would compromise the elite, handcrafted cannabis market. If anything, I think it would highlight the difference between master growers and the rest of us and make their skill even more valuable.

Cannabis is in flux. California, the world's leader in legal cannabis flower cultivation, is quickly becoming the leader in how to kill the golden goose.

What is the golden goose? I would contend that it is highly crafted cannabis grown by the best cannabis cultivators at the smallest scale. The challenge is, everyone has been trying to scale up. Grow more cannabis and sell it for cheaper. It's a race to the bottom. A race where nobody wins. The second challenge is, California has made it nearly impossible to get started as a very small grower, as the barrier for entry is very high.

But there are a few companies out there who could start this trend. The race to the thousand dollar ounce. The race to the top.

Here's the trick. In order for an ounce of cannabis flower to be bought at this price, it has to be authentic. It has to be cared for at the highest level from seed to sprout, to location of planting, the food fed to the plant, the music played to it throughout it's life, where the water comes from, the way it I harvested, hung, dried, trimmed (or not), cured, how long it's cured and how well, how it's packaged, shipped, presented and finally sold. Not to mention the sales and distribution pipeline has to be perfect and timely because the customer can't buy this product at the wrong time or they will not get what is intended.

That's just the beginning, because not only do you have to build the processes and presentation and distribution to make the ounce authentically worth a thousand dollars, you have to tell the story of that process in a way that educates the consumer why it's worth that. What would happen if I don't buy this on the right day? What if the cannabis got too warm or too cold or exposed to sunlight for a few hours while it cured or sat in the dispensary? You need to tell us every detail of every little decision. When you cut down this particular plant that is this particular ounce, I want to see photographs of the trichomes on the day that it was cut and an explanation of why you made the decision based on all of the attributes of the flower that day. This level of detailed storytelling has to be done in order for you to distill that volume of words down to simple, clean, brand messaging that educates me without bogging me down.

It's not easy. That's why very few have even tried. But I know one thing, if California legacy cannabis is to survive the next fifteen years, we have to start racing to the top and stop competing with cheaper, scalable cannabis. If there is to be a Steve Jobs or Elon Musk of cannabis who will attempt to take on and disrupt the big world players, then there will only be one, and if you are reading this, more power to you, I hope you win. The rest of us have to think like Seth Godin and design for scarcity, rareness, and make our cannabis unparalleled.

Be the Golden Goose.

I love this time of year. Growing up in Montana, the holidays have a special magic. The crisp frozen air, snow everywhere, fireplaces raging, comfy wool socks... mmm. Love it.

Then I became an adult. I learned that people beat each other up for pieces of plastic fabric shaped as Sesame Street characters. I learned that elderly women have been trampled to death in the biggest yearly craze in the nation. Holiday shopping.

It's hotter than baseball in October. It's more popular than the Super Bowl (seriously) and you could actually die from it.

I for one have opted out. I don't buy it. Lol. Why do we participate in such a vile venture? Why do we support those who revel in the frenzy and stir it up so they can make even more money on things that end unused in a closet or better yet in the trash or re-gifted? Odd, I just heard some dude say "but I am getting a TV! I use that every day and the cost savings are too much to pass up!" I don't know if I can help you dude, the TV is eating you.

I beg of you, if you participate in this madness, please find an alternative. Cyber Monday is at least safer and more humane, although just as lost in a forest of consumerist, dopamine fueled insanity.

Let's do something better. How about making your gifts? Revive your painting skills, and don't buy the canvases, find something else to paint on. Mechanically inclined? Give your five closest loved ones a handwritten gift certificate for free labor on one free oil change, minus the oil of course, they need to buy that. ;) The point is, we all have skills that people value, and only children complain about money not being spent on them, even if they look like adults, they are still children. The rest of us love genuine heartfelt time and energy put into a handmade gift.

If you must spend money, consider the many alternatives to going shopping or buying things.

Whatever you do, please, do something besides continue to support this insane train we are on. This Black Friday thing has been going on nearly one hundred years and it's time for a change, it's likely the best gift we can give our society and our children.

Last night I went to a mansion party in LA. It was grand opening for a cool cannabis brand that has been up and coming for some time.

Cool party. Good weed, good drinks, good music, beautiful people...

There I was, finishing a joint we had sparked at this weed party where there were free lighters, grinders, weed, stash jars and more. As I finished the joint, I began looking for a receptacle for the roach. A garbage can? Nope. Ashtray? Nope. Anything like that for putting the remains of our smoking? Nope.

You see, good design is about thinking things all the way through. What happens in the beginning is important. Where do you get the weed? Where do you get the swag? What materials are they made from? What inks and paints were used? Did everyone in the manufacturing process get a good, livable wage? Very important stuff.

What about the end of a product's life? Where does it go when it has been used? How do we deal with it? Is there a process for that? Do we just sweep it under some proverbial rug and ignore it? We seem to tend to ignore it, as I noted that every good party or festival has the same problem. Not enough bathrooms, garbages or ashtrays. I guess we just don't like to deal with our own shit.

I ended up throwing the roach on the ground, as did the hundreds of other people who were lighting up. I am sure that this morning the cleaning crew became hyper aware of the lack of trashes or ashtrays as they scoured the grounds for roaches and butts. With a little thinking, that job would have been easy and much cheaper and the cleaning money could have been used for something else a little more useful and fun than paying humans tohunt for ground roaches.

So the next time you plan an event, here's a tip. Start at the end. Start with visualizing what happens when all the people are gone and you threw a successful (crowded) event. Visualize the two bathrooms you have for 400 people over the course of 5 hours. Visualize what they look like after 400 people have used them for everything that people at parties use bathrooms for. Visualize where the trash is put when people don't have receptacles nearby as they finish their drink. Visualize the containers you chose for the party or event. Red solo cups? They are everywhere. Cans? Yes you did see a couple in the street on the way back to cleanup. Visualize the thousands of cigarette butts and roaches on the ground.

You get the idea. Solve those problems first and then take care of the fun stuff like the collectible swag and the music and the activation area design... Your party will run better and people will know, even if it's subconscious, that you think about them and care about them very deeply. Isn't that what you want people to think about your brand?

When we design for money, we think short-term. We lack empathy, well at least long term empathy. We get an aha. We think to ourselves, "that's how I can make my millions this year!"

It's easy to make a lot of money, if that's all that matters. I mean, watch Gary Vee, he gives you a new way to make money almost everyday and you don't need much to start. People launch small products everyday that sell in the millions and last for a year or two and then the product stops selling. If you do it right, you can launch a cheap plastic product, make a ton of money and walk away in a year or two and no one's the wiser. Except for that fish choking on the little piece of plastic that ended up in the ocean after some kid threw your little product off the pier, the fish knows what you did.

On the other side of the spectrum, we have Design for Good. When we design for good, we solve real problems regardless of money. We start a clothing company making only products that are from hemp, organic cotton, and leather, rather than polyester or nylon. We start a company devoted to making 3D printing filament out of biodegradable hemp plastic. We make products designed to last and be used for a lifetime or more, rather than something designed to last a month or a year and purchased again. Sorry, but the Gillette model has to go.

If you really want to see where this plays out, think about promotional products. Every year, we have more than 13,000 trade shows in the US alone. At every trade show, there are hundreds of booths packed with thousands of junk plastic products they are handing out as a marketing tool for you to remember them by. Isn't that sweet?

So, every year, we dump somewhere in the tens to hundreds of millions of promotional products into our economy for them to be processed and shit into the ground or the ocean or wherever they eventually end up. Sad, right? It doesn't have to end here.

We have technologies and design solutions for issues like this. The challenge is, there is no short or longterm "money" in it. At least it doesn't seem like it. But look at the organic food movement in the US. Consumers were educated on the ground level. They went to the store demanding organic products even if it cost twice as much. How did it start? Advocates and activists. People who cared more about spending their time educating others and making the food reality than they did about making money in the short term.

So the question is, what can you do today?

Maybe today you were thinking about printing some shirts for your business or something like that. Consider where the material comes from, and consider where it ends up. Finding a source for ethical organic cotton shirts or even better, a good hemp fabric... that's hard. I know. I look all the time. Then you realize that the cost is a lot higher than your $5 t-shirt you normally buy, maybe even three times higher. Then you realize that the fabric isn't as soft. Now you are thinking about just buying those cheap shirts and getting it over with. Besides, who has time for this?

This is how bad design choices are made. The thought process should be this:

I know the fabric isn't as soft, so I am going to buy it anyways and get to know the maker of the fabric and talk to them to see if they are working on improving it. If so, I want to help, what can I do? Not to mention that, maybe I know some people who are good at engineering business systems and they can help us bring the cost of the shirts down so that others might be more inclined to support this business and cause. In fact, I should start a facebook group and link all the people I can find who work in ethical fabrics and get all the heads together. After all, aren't we all trying to change the face of textiles in general?

Do you see what I mean? The simplest thing like ordering shirts for your business can become a nexus point of major cultural change. The question is, are you willing? Will you care that extra amount that it takes to see it through? Will you do it, not just because it will make money, but more importantly, because it is the right thing to do?

I think so. I believe in you.

Peace and Love,

It happens to everyone. You are mid project and you realize that you didn't start correctly and as a result your project isn't quite up to snuff.

This is why design matters so much. Even more, this is why a proper understanding of design is paramount.

The problem arises because we consume so much design everyday. From our house, to our car, to the bowl we eat from, our screens, not to mention the never ending stream of content on our screens... On and on and on it goes, where it stops, nobody knows.

Because we are such great consumers of design, most of us have an experiential understanding of what good design is. But we can't explain it. We definitely could not teach a class on design. Most of us have a hard time actually defining the word.

We are lost in a sea of design, and yet few of us have any real insight into the underpinnings of it all.

The truth is, what we design, designs us in return. The shape of a floor plan in a rail station determines how people walk through that space. The shape of a page, what you put on it and where determines the readers actions as they follow you through your story.

So you might ask, "Why does this matter? It sounds like you are rambling." Here's why it matters.

The world is full of people executing design without even understanding what it is. This is why there is so much bad design. That bad design is LITERALLY affecting all of us, everyday, helping us to continue to make the same choices that we have been making for quite sometime.

It's like a home builder who is an everyday Joe who knows how to build a house because "he's seen a lot of them and he knows what a good house looks like."

Yeah? What about Japanese design and woodcrafting? Know anything about that? How about the Arts and Crafts movement of the early 20th century? The Greene Brothers? Do you know WHY the Japanese built houses the way they did for hundreds of years? On top of that, could you build a house by yourself with no ones help, from start to finish?

The questions aren't meant to make one feel stupid or ignorant. What they are meant to do is point out that if you want to build houses, first you really need to understand not only the proper how, but even more important, the proper why.

It comes down to the little things. Installing the dishwasher two more steps away from the silverware than was necessary means that every time you go from the dishwasher to the silverware drawer you walk an extra four steps. So, if you are super efficient, and you never forget anything on your first trip, you only tally up four extra steps a day. After ten years of living in the home, that little design flaw cost 6 miles of walking or a full day from your life.

You might say, so what? It's not that much. Who cares?

Well, if it is possible that one little flaw that small is robbing you of your precious life one drip at a time, how many other things in your home are that way? What if there are over one hundred flaws like this in the design of your home? Maybe even hundreds? What about your car? What about the supermarket? What about your job? Your phone? Your email? Your social media accounts? Your family? Your vacations?

Hmmm. It's starts to pile up, doesn't it?

Speaking of flaws, why are we currently spending resources globally cleaning up our natural environment?

Bad design.

What if the scientists who were making fuels out of peanuts and hemp oil 150 years ago had won? What if all of our plastics were made from hemp as Henry Ford imagined almost 100 years ago? What if all of these things were biodegradable and more integrated into the way the planet works? It's been possible for a long time. We have the technology. We have everything in our grasp to build the most amazing future for our kids, but it seems so hard to get out of this spiral we have put ourselves in.

Shit. How do we get out? 

Start learning how to start. Learn about the the foundations of everything you interact with. Don't just learn about it, put the knowledge to use. Extract the wisdom and meaning from everything in your life and you will start building an excellent foundation. An excellent foundation for what, you might ask. An excellent foundation foundation for being an excellent designer of an excellent future.

In the Cannabis Industry today we have a myriad of problems affecting our marketplace. These problems are trickling down to every area of the industry to the point where many of the largest companies in California have announced serious layoffs and deep budget cuts as we prepare to go into 2020.

Everyone knows that there are many reasons for this:

1. State Regulation is very expensive and difficult to deal with, almost impossible for a small business.
2. Depending on the municipality or county, the State Regulation difficulty can be multiplied by a large factor.
3. The State is cracking down hard on operations in the black market making the supply more scarce.
4. Prices have risen on the legacy market. The pound price this harvest is in many cases a couple hundred dollars higher than last year at the same time.
5. People are rushing to capitalize on this legacy market opportunity while it is so difficult to enter the regulated market.
6. There are many more reasons... etc. etc. etc...

For those of us who are still fighting on, believing that we can fix the problems created by the state, there is hope, if you can hunker down and hang on. Not only that, this is your opportunity to really see longterm and work to shape the next 40 or more years.

One major way to do that is through branding. Storytelling. How are people going to understand how fragile the flowering and harvesting and curing process is if we don't figure out how to tell them? How will they know that it matters that you let your flowers mature to get those trichomes nice and amber while your neighbor harvested the same genetic early while the trichomes are still clear? How are they going to see that you care so much about the details?

I will tell you how. YOU have to tell them. YOU have to do the writing. YOU have to publish articles on your site and share them to social media. YOU have to talk about your experiences and create new words and terms and share them with the community so we can all learn to use them. YOU have to devote a small portion of your day everyday to telling the story and pushing it to the world. YOU have to hear the feedback and refine the way you tell people so that you get better and better. No one is coming to save you. There is no secret formula. This is it.

As you educate people to your passion and knowledge, your branding will emerge. Who you are will become very clear, to them, to you, to everyone. What makes you different will become nearly impossible to miss. You will continue to gain market differentiation if you stay true to your core values and passions and you strive to communicate that to your customers daily.

I know it's hard. I know it seems like it's more than you can handle. I know you already put in 16 hour days. I know that you used to take off December to April and then work your Spring Summer and Fall relentlessly. I know that now, you don't get to take the winter off because that's how you stay ahead.

Keep going. It's worth it because we only have one life to live and spending it making sure the lives that come after us have a better world because of Cannabis, well, isn't that why we are all fighting so hard?

Yesterday I had the time and fortunate luck to stumble onto Seth Godin's Instagram Live about tension.

He riffed on the fact that creating tension is the process that pulls a person forward toward change. Marketers have used this for a long time to help you make decisions about life. Generally they use it to sell you more and make more money.

Here is an example put forward on the show Brain Games:

You walk into a movie theater, you go through the line and get your ticket. Then you proceed to the ever-expensive concession stand. You want popcorn and you see that the small quart size container is $4 and the gallon size large is $12. If you are like most people, you see the better deal in the small container as you don't want to spend drastically that much more for the large than the small.

The next day you go to see another new movie, only this time you walk in, get your ticket and go to the concession stand and now there is a medium that is exactly a split size between the small and the large and it is $9. Suddenly, your frame of reference for pricing on the small and large is very different. Now, if you are most people, you perceive that the large is now the best deal because you perceive a large savings in the jump from small to medium to large. You buy the large.

These decisions aren't conscious. We are lead around our modern world by our noses and we rarely are aware.

That is the point of this post.
A: Let's all decide to be more aware of the subtle messaging in our consumer oriented world.
B: Learn to use these techniques of tension in your own world to make the world a better place. These techniques aren't inherently bad, it all depends on the level of intent that we put behind our tension.

Riffing a little more, you can learn to see this tension everywhere. The way we get ready in the morning to get the attention of our boss or girlfriend or coworker that we want to impress, The musical tension in a song that makes it go to that super funky bridge, that art piece that makes you wonder just exactly what the artist is saying, the teacher who gives you just enough information to make you want to learn more on your own...

Tension is all around us, and it is up to us to see it and use it for good or let others see it and use it to direct us to whatever purposes they think are good for us.

Which do you prefer?

The intersection of cannabis and the world of design and marketing is quite interesting indeed. Traditionally, in recent history, design has served the corporate and industrial needs of the world by creating messaging and communication intended to sell sell sell. That selling has gone down a path towards more and more convenience, luxury and single use items leading to mass pollution.

On the other side, cannabis is a plant that when studied, teaches us that the natural world has much more to offer. Aside from the cannabinoid content, the oils and the nutritional and medicinal aspects of the plant, it can do nearly anything we can imagine it to do. We can use the oils of the plant to make fuel, plastics (biodegradable at that), cosmetics, adhesives, cleaners, food and more. We haven't even talked about the fiber of the plant, which is one of the strongest we have discovered in nature. It can be used to make clothing, building materials, furniture, insulation... Then imagine recombining the properties of the oil and the fiber...plywood and fiberboard, hemp post-it notes, hemp fiberglass... All the modern products that we make with oil, we can make with plants, and make it so those things are more easily absorbed back into the earth. And I have yet to mention terpenes! The chemical possibilities of cannabis are just as astounding!

The world of design is huge. We don't think about it much as we mostly take it for granted. It's like air. It's everywhere. Every screw, every bolt, every structural beam, every frame, every sign, every road, every fit and finish, design is everywhere. Architectural design, industrial design, graphic design, communication design, sound design, fashion design, product design, packaging design, all of these things have the potential to be majorly disrupted and impacted by the cannabis plant. We haven't even begun.

The revolution that is about to happen in the design world impacts all of us. What we design designs us in return, so we would all do well to really think through the consequences of our actions and to focus on our goals and make current decisions based on that. There is no excuse to put out a cannabis product in packaging that isn't 100% hemp. The only reason that hemp packaging isn't meeting the design standards of normal plastics, papers, cardboards and printing processes is because most companies settle. They settle for tree paper products because it looks better and it's cheaper. Remember the old adage, sell sell sell? Well here we are again.

Just like the organic food movement, real change will happen when consumers decide they don't care if the packaging doesn't look as good because the concept of "better" has a new definition. Better means the blacks are not necessarily the blackest when printed (yet), but the ink and paper are compostable and plant based so it returns to the natural earth more easily. It means that having shiny gold foil plastic inside of a box might have to be clear or brown for now and the consistency might not be as good, but again, It's compostable and better for us and our environment. Wouldn't it be great if 100% of our trash could convert directly to compost and mulch for farming and gardening?

We have to make the decision to tell a new story about what better is. Our concept of comfort and convenience has to change, and we have to make the demand with our dollars. If you are a consumer, look for products made from partial or 100% hemp and buy them even if the quality isn't there yet. It's a tiny sacrifice in the longterm. If you are a business, look for packaging that is hemp based and use it, even if the look and feel isn't there yet. Better yet, if you have a business that is currently in fabrics or plastics or any kind of product manufacturing, you ought to be creating your own sources or processes for more and more hemp in your products. First movers are going to win in the long run with this strategy. Use it as a story to promote your corporate responsibility. Publicly shame companies and competition not doing the same. Show your customer that their dollars are making real demonstrable change.

Tell others about why you are making these decisions and encourage them to do the same. This is how revolutions happen friends so let's stay on target.

Love and Peace,

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