The internet is a place where countless hours can be poured into an endless hole of click-bait articles, quote-laden pictures, and cat memes. But it can also be an incredible resource for cannabis design inspiration; a portal into the most creative and brilliant minds in the creative space.
Cannabis Design Inspiration
With so many options for inspiring design, there’s no reason for your cannabis brand to rely on outdated imagery. Rastafarian stereotypes, scantily-clad women, or all-green-everything branding are quickly becoming a thing of the past. Today’s cannabis consumer is drawn to the same type of quality they see in mainstream marketing and product design. Creative branding, packaging, typography, and photography are a necessary piece of the puzzle and not just an afterthought. To help you out, we’ve put together 6 great websites for cannabis design inspiration.
Dieline
If you are looking to revamp your product packaging and need inspiration, look no further than Dieline – a collection of artistic and thoughtful packaging examples for all types of products. Their aim is to “build a global community of practitioners and to advocate the packaging industry towards more sustainable solutions. ” Through reader-submitted projects and original editorial content, Dieline proves they have the pulse on the most innovative packaging examples on the market, and even encourages positive change in packaging design through their design awards categories like “Plastic Free Innovation of the Year”.
Bēhance
If you are a designer, Bēhance is a great platform to showcase your creative work and to find inspiration from other designers. Designers submit work to their portfolios on the site which means Bēhance is a fresh look at top trends. In addition, the platform allows artists to upload collections, detail the tools they used in their process, list their professional websites, interact with the design community, and follow other designers they aspire to. Categories include graphic design, illustration, motion graphics, photography, and UI/UX – which makes this platform a jam-packed resource for design motivation.
Design Inspiration
If you are looking for inspiration from architecture to photography, fashion to automotive design, you’ve come to the right place. The claim to fame for designspiration.net is their “Swiss army knife” of a search function which allows you to search their site based on a color palette, font, keywords, and tags. The search function uses LiveType Search which populates the search bar with what you type while on the site.
Although you can browse as your heart desires, the platform is invite only. Requiring an invite maintains the quality of uploads and it’s user base of curated artists. But before you shed a tear, you can request an invitation to be a member of their curators. May the odds be ever in your favor.
Pinterest has become a mecca for creative inspiration that goes well beyond the traditional designer. Crafters, hobbyists, beginners, and pros all have an opportunity to find nuggets of gold on Pinterest. The true value is that pins come from every corner of the internet, including the sites mentioned in this article. There’s no limit to the creative topics, genres, or sources of pins. Allowing you to save your inspirations to one board, or create hyper-focused boards to organize all your sources of creativity, but whatever you choose the best part is that it’s saved for you to come back to later.
No more losing your inspiration to the endless feed of the internet. It’s also a great way to share your own designs or pieces of your portfolio with the world. Pinterest allows you to contribute to group boards or pin creative assets from your own site – maximizing exposure.
Awwwards
Unlike the other platforms listed, Awwwards focuses on one key source: website design. The focus is to highlight the highest-quality web design available today, by enlisting expert web designers to judge submissions. One thing to mention is that this site utilizes extensive tagging to ensure you find the best of the best sites through a slew of keywords that extend past design and enter into color palettes, industry verticals, platforms utilized, and more.
A bonus is that they’ve compiled a professional directory and job board for their viewers – knowing that their target is audience engaged. Their scoring system is based on four key elements and weighs each element accordingly: design (40%), usability (30%), creativity (20%), and content (10%). With such a curated and highly critiqued list of sites, you’re sure to find the most inspiring website designs.
Webby Awards
Now if you haven’t exhausted yourself with ideas from the slew of designer-driven sources and want a highly curated list of the best of the best designs backed by industry awards, navigate your way to the Webby Awards. Celebrating their 22nd year, the Webby Awards receive thousands of international design entries that are judged by industry professionals from The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences. The categories of design (and areas of consideration into the awards) expand further into media sources most of the other platforms don’t; including websites, film & video, advertising/ media/ PR, mobile sites & apps, social, podcasts & digital audio, and games. Even the New York Times says that a Webby award is “The internet’s highest honor”.
Time to Design
With so many platforms dedicated to design and innovation, it’s impossible to run out of inspiration for your cannabis brand. The best way to communicate legitimacy, professionalism, values, and quality of your brand and your product is through exquisite design. Get those creative juices flowing. Consequently, your brand may be the next to dawn the “best of” design lists this time next year.
