Your logo is the symbolic representation of your brand and everything it stands for.

When people see your logo, they’ll be reminded of your company and any memories they’ve formed in association with it.

Over time, your company will produce tons of advertising materials: websites, brochures,  videos, billboards, etc. And the sales copy and content you generate today will eventually be replaced by the copy and content of tomorrow.

But your logo will remain the same for as long as your company lasts – hopefully!

That’s why when the time comes to create your logo, you’ll need to give it some serious thought.

Logo is inseparable part of dispensary marketing too.

 

Here are 5 tips for creating the best cannabis business logo.

1. Find a Great Designer

If you’re a small company with limited resources, you may feel that you need to handle the logo design yourself in order to save money.

Or maybe you’re fortunate enough to have your own in-house marketing team, complete with designers who can create your logo.

Or you may decide to hire an outside marketing agency to design the logo for you.

Here’s how we see it: whoever designs your logo needs to know what they’re doing.

Your designer should be familiar with basic logo design principles such as simplicity, scalability, versatility, and relevancy, just to name a few.

Your logo is going to represent your company for years to come. Yes, you can always re-brand and change the design if it’s not working, but you should never consider that as an actual option. You’ll wind up losing time, energy, and money.

There are lots of place where you can cut back on marketing costs. But your logo design shouldn’t be one of them.

If you’ve got an extensive background in design, then you probably don’t have anything to worry about. Otherwise, don’t be afraid to bring in outside help!

2. Make Your Logo Speak to Your Target Customer

As the primary symbol of your brand, your logo should communicate a specific type of sensibility, feeling, and attitude.

Why? Because it needs to grab people’s attention.

Which begs the question: whose attention are you trying to grab?

In other words, who are the members of your target demographic?

• Are you trying to attract customers who are knee-deep in “420 culture?”
• Are you selling luxury brand cannabis products? Do your ideal customers have a good amount of disposable income? Are they extremely conscious about things like cannabinoid percentages and terpene counts?
• Are you trying to attract people who’ve never used cannabis before?
• Are you operating in the medical cannabis space? Do you want consumers to think of your products not as recreational products but as medicine?

Your target demographic will determine the type and style of logo you’ll need to grab their attention.

3. Think Twice Before Using the Cannabis Leaf in Your Logo

The cannabis leaf is iconic, and it’s not uncommon to see it incorporated into business logos.

But before you decide to use it in your own logo, here’s something to think about:

Not everybody responds to the leaf in the same way.

For example, the 420 crowd and other pro-cannabis advocates see the leaf as a beloved symbol.

But for many others, the leaf may be perceived negatively because the symbol has been associated with illegality and “stoner culture” for so long.

That’s not to say that you can’t use it at all. If you feel strongly about incorporating it, try designing the logo in a way that plays on the idea of the cannabis leaf or features a never-seen-before variation of it.

4. Incorporate the Name of Your Business in the Logo

Since cannabis hasn’t fully entered the mainstream yet, there are no widely recognized national cannabis brands. Companies are still relatively unknown outside of the regional areas in which they operate.

Compare that to a company like Apple.

Because of their wide brand recognition, Apple doesn’t need to have their name incorporated into their logo. You just show them that iconic apple, and everyone gets it.

Most cannabis companies, on the other hand, will benefit from having a wordmark, which is the name of the brand written in a stylized logo form (e.g. the Coca-Cola logo). And of course, you can still have a brand symbol that goes along with the wordmark.

5. Make Sure It’s Unique

The purpose of your logo is to help consumers identify your brand and distinguish it from your competitors.

If you want to stand out, resist the urge to copy any element of another company’s logo, no matter how cool it looks. After all, you don’t want to be accused of plagiarism!

Your business is one of a kind – make sure your logo reflects that!

Need help creating a great logo for your cannabis business? At Hazy Marketing, we specialize in logo design and other aspects of cannabis business branding.

 

Give us a call at (702) 600-9687 or email us at hello@hazymarketing.com for more info!