HIGH-5 CANNABIS
full disclosure: I do not partake.
cannabis is legal in Washington State, but I’m not hip to the culture or the product so I’m not the first person you would approach to do work for a dispensary. however, through my other work I met the owner of High-5 and he’s a nice guy who had a cool idea, so I said, “shoot, I’ll give it a try”.
THE PROBLEM:
the original logo made for High-5 was an illustration created by an incredibly skilled professional whose work I had admired for years. Jon (the owner of High-5) had asked if I could do something in a similar style that didn’t involve a cannabis leaf, because he wanted to make a large outdoor sign and it’s illegal to put a leaf on it. he pitched me the idea of a Washington State license plate with ‘High-5’ as the letters, maybe ‘cannabis’ or something clever beneath and 420 as the date on the tabs.
THE SOLUTION:
I wasn’t very experienced with illustration, but I thought I’d give it a shot. I gathered several pictures of WA license plates on the internet to find an example of each letter, the dash and number 5 for reference. first, I traced the outline of the plate, then I traced the silhouette of the mountains and it started looking pretty good. so I progressed to the letters, got the basic shapes down and began to experiment with different shading. the screws at the top are basically drawn using a photo of my own license plate for reference. The ‘Washington’ and ‘cannabis’ lettering that is used on license plates. I was fortunate enough to find the font, so I just typed it in - same thing for the letters and numbers on the registration tabs. I used the colors from the High-5 logo for the colors on the tabs to stay consistent with their brand. this was a challenging project that I was really happy to take on and learned a whole lot in the process.
