Buddy
Buddy brings clarity and originality to a heavily stereotyped perception of weed. Today, there is an incredibly exciting and unique opportunity to have a global impact on the image of an entire industry, and Buddy seeks to redefine the brand image of cannabis, and cannabis culture.
With the legalisation of weed in Canada, there is a huge opportunity for companies to redefine the stereotyped image of cannabis and cannabis culture. We want to be part of the push to do this, and Buddy plays right into that opportunity.
Buddy is a brand that was named and created by us. The ambition was to add refinement and originality to an area where the visual landscape consistently plays into stereotypes, avoiding the predefined associations of the industry.
Simplicity was the key for this identity. The entire brand experience around Buddy is focused on making the user journey easy. A simplified product lineup, straightforward product descriptions, and a service that seeks to educate and inform customers to aid their understanding. The idea behind Buddy was a company that would hold the customer’s hand from start to finish and demystify some of the complexity around buying weed.
That is exactly where the name and the logo for the business came from. Besides the slight pun on the word “bud”, the name implies the idea that this company is literally your buddy when it comes to making cannabis decisions. We then created a logo to be the simplest distillation of this theme, using 2 dots as a genderless, ageless, and timeless symbol of companionship.
Such a simple logo also allowed for a very flexible visual system, where the dots can represent an infinite number of concepts utilising varying sizes and negative space. Punchy copywriting then helped to illustrate these concepts, also bringing a human and personable voice to the brand. The brand typeface was also chosen to aid this approachability. Graphik is clear, upfront, and simple, helping to amplify this sense of familiarity and openness.
The only part of the identity where we did lean into established cannabis notions was in the colour palette. The use of green has clear associations to the industry, but in this case we used it cautiously to avoid feeling unoriginal or dated. We combined this with supporting colours that feel new and refreshed in the context of weed, using bright tones to further humanise the brand and move away from the clandestine history of the product.
Ultimately, the visual identity for Buddy sought to mark a fresh beginning for cannabis, and help to redefine its global image through a brand that is inclusive, identifiable, and relatable across all cultures.
