Branding for a CBD company from scratch

We met with the client before they even had a name to call their company. The prerequisites were as follows:

• Appeal to many different audiences but take the stigma out of CBD products

• Eventually have subbrands to appeal to more direct audiences

• Fit it with the trends but still stand out

• Organic, home-grown (local to Kentucky), clean and up to standards facility for producing CBD products

• Applications included a new website, packaging on products, and social media campaigns

The process for this branding project started out with a creative jam session to come up with a name. Here were some of the name we narrowed down to:

• Sundew

• Nectar

• Idyl

• Zenova

• Nourish

• Vivawell

• Blissful Blends

• Coze

• Willow Well

• Crane & Co CBD

Eventually we got it down to our final pick: Zenova. And the client loved it.

Moving forward we had to nail down the logo and branding. I started with a mood board of imagery, colors, and finally logos I liked that I thought fit the same vein of Zenova.

Next it was time to find some fonts that would work in the logo. I wanted Zenova to be edgy and modern but still have a farm-y organic feel with the colors and geometry. Here are the fonts I ended up liking:

Next I played around with some different iconography to go with the name. I usually find icons via stock websites I'm subscribed to and then manipulate them to be my own. If needed, I also create a few from scratch.

Next it was time to play around with copy and icon together.

And after getting feedback on these from my team, I narrowed it down to six logo concepts.

I presented these 6 concepts to the client in a nice presentation which you can download below.

Zenova-Logo Concepts.pdf

Download PDF • 2.01MB

After some back and forth the client finally landed on what would the final logo:

The client was very pleased with the modern, simplistic copy along with the colorful leaf icon which we intended to use as the color palette for further branding pieces and the new website.

I always package up the logo with various formats for versatility - including a stacked version and a horizontal version as well as all the different color variations.

This project was a great learning experience of how I can turn a company without a name into a beautiful, cohesive brand.