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Virid

Contributed by Terry Sieting on Apr 19th, 2019. Artwork published in
February 2019
.
Virid's primary wordmark set in each of the brand's color combinations.
Photo: Terry Sieting. License: All Rights Reserved.

Virid's primary wordmark set in each of the brand's color combinations.

Virid is a training, staffing, and consulting agency for Michigan’s growing cannabis industry. The company provides a wide range of HR related solutions and sets itself apart by the quality and education of its candidates.

While the cannabis industry is still very young, its presence in our culture is not. Traction’s strategy for Virid sought to take advantage of this sentiment. The agency’s design approach focused on utilizing cues from an era that not only embodied the brand’s newly crafted tonality but celebrated the use of marijuana in all forms: the late 1960s and early 1970s.The design team collected a range of design instances from Woodstock tickets to cooking magazines as a source of inspiration.

The primary logo, based on Bookmania, is a custom wordmark featuring a “sprouting” V, symbolic of the growth of business and of cannabis. Bookmania is also used for headlines, supported by Centra No. 2 for all other text.

A single page website was developed, plus a set of brand collateral with center-focused design. Some of the brand pieces focus on a singular color approach, while other pieces are executed in each of the brand’s color combinations.

Virid's letterhead design
Photo: Terry Sieting. License: All Rights Reserved.

Virid's letterhead design

Virid's business cards
Photo: Terry Sieting. License: All Rights Reserved.

Virid's business cards

Virid 4
Photo: Terry Sieting. License: All Rights Reserved.
Virid button design
Photo: Terry Sieting. License: All Rights Reserved.

Virid button design

Virid 6
Source: viridgroup.com License: All Rights Reserved.
Virid 7
Photo: Terry Sieting. License: All Rights Reserved.
Virid 8
Photo: Terry Sieting. License: All Rights Reserved.
Virid 9
Photo: Terry Sieting. License: All Rights Reserved.

3 Comments on “Virid”

  1. This looks a lot like the Chobani redesign. Here’s a pdf with their Brand Launch Media Kit (Nov. 2017).

  2. Thanks for the reference, Mike!

    Chubby or soft serif typefaces with retro vibes indeed enjoy growing popularity. Just two weeks ago, Eliza Brooke published an article on Noticed, the design trend column of The Goods by Vox, titled “Why funky ’70s-style fonts are popping up on brands like Chobani and Glossier”. Among the examples given by Brooke, there’s At Home with Amy Sedaris, which is another use of Bookmania, and the cookware brand Great Jones and their use of (non-Black) Cooper. In addition, one could include Mailchimp, which since 2018 makes prominent use of the same typeface.

    According to Commercial Type, Chobani Serif …

    draws inspiration from quirky serif typefaces that were popular in the early 20th century such as Windsor, Clearface, Cheltenham, and Century Oldstyle. Like these typefaces, Chobani Serif has a strong personality, thanks in part to its unusual mix of hard and soft endings on strokes and terminals.

    The images in Brand New’s review of the Chobani rebranding show that the new logo (drawn by Berton Hasebe) initially was paired with Clearface.

    Virid’s typeface, Bookmania, is indeed not so different from Chobani Serif in the look and feel (and the use of green in both brands helps to make the connection). They both have moderate contrast, angled entry strokes (on i or u), and round terminals (on g or y). Chobani Serif (top) is distinguished from Bookmania (bottom) by a larger x-height and flat serifs. Its round-bellied a and the angled bar in e reveal the influence of faces like Windsor.

  3. That’s really cool! And thanks for the article!

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