Building The Bakery: A psychedelic adventure in brand discovery

Tangie was an enlightened alien lifeform that looked suspiciously like a tiger with a third eye. They touched down in the deserts of the American southwest in the late 1960s, before realigning at an ashram in Northern India. Unfortunately Tangie wasn’t long for this world. Just days after their appearance, the extraterrestrial in a big cat’s body was taken out by a giant, one-eyed flower that stinks of rotting flesh.  

We know, sooo dramatic. But sometimes you gotta dig deep in the name of brand discovery. 

We’ve spent the better part of the past two decades building brands for other people. As The Grass Agency, we’ve ventured into the wilds of cannabis catering, Indian classical dance, personalized smoothie delivery, and virtual healing. With every project we carve out a new niche of specialized knowledge in our heads. They’ve all managed to shift our perspective, but no branding exercise has been more enlightening than our own. 

For The Bakery, the path to a fully realized identity would take us back in time and half way across the globe, before dropping us down back at home. The name, the vibe, the aesthetic, it all started with a fictional hash den in Kathmandu. The Bakery, a ramshackle after hours hippy hideout, featured in the 1971 psychedelic Bollywood musical, Hare Rama Hare Krishna, captured us with its spirit of freedom and use of double entendre. It wasn’t just the name that fascinated us, but what was happening there: the simultaneous clashing and melding of radical western and traditional south asian cultures. That tension created something electric that’s still giving off sparks today. 

It’s that constant push and pull, that gave birth to the American head shop. So it just made sense that our brand of smoking accessories and home goods would reference that moment in time. The Bakery gave us the opportunity to put our spin on what made early American head shops so fascinating: the radical politics, the spiritual freedom, the irreverent wit, the covert nature, and, of course, the drugs.  

But our brand had to do more than reference a period neither of us lived through. It had to feel like home. Reena grew up the anti-model minority child of two South Asian doctors in Southeast Texas, and I, on the opposite end of the state, gave my parents plenty to worry about as the gay, atheist son of a preacher and a speech pathologist. We both grew up outsiders, but with largely different concepts of home. 

With all of that in mind, we set out to create a logo that was trippy and unexpected, while delivering warmth and finesse. It had to reference our heritage and the late 1960s psychedelics movement, and it had to feel like home. 

“There ain’t nothing playful about a flower that smells like spoiled meat, y’all!”

“The name, the vibe, the aesthetic, it all started with a fictional hash den in Kathmandu.”

Our logo exploration began with an enlightened eye, a giant jungle flower that stinks of rotting flesh, and an outstretched hand. The eye and the flower felt like perfect symbols to reference the cross-cultural chaos of late 1960s drug culture, while the outstretched hand welcomed you with generosity and acceptance. Our earliest explorations delivered on our goals but lacked the sense of whimsy that defines us as a studio. There ain’t nothing playful about a flower that smells like spoiled meat, y’all!

For the next iteration we attempted a more appetizing design, but over-corrected on the cute. We referenced cartoon mascots for food brands, developing a fictional character that would carry the brand narrative in an odd biography. We were so fond of our alien-tiger hybrid that we nearly launched with it. But Tangie was too sweet.

We explored a few more iterations on the enlightened tiger, before resurrecting our discarder stinking flower. We placed it just under the third eye of a still sweet, but saltier feline. As we finessed the lines on the cat’s face, the flower’s blossom grew leaves, and expressive splashes sprung from its petals. 

We zoomed in on the flower, and the tiger’s face vanished, revealing a simple expression of the brand as we see it. A flower that is both trippy and unexpected, while maintaining warmth and finesse. It felt whimsical and fierce and clever. It just felt right. Next we selected a palette of colors that spoke to the electricity of South Asia in the late 1960s and the sunsets of the American southwest. 

Neon green, bubble gum pink, rich reds, and bright oranges were offset by the calming touch of lavender and terra cotta. As our brand came together, the world underwent monumental shifts: in politics, in race relations, in public health. We felt compelled to make a statement about our place as a head shop and home goods store at this particular point in history. We created a tombstone, crested by our name, framed on either side by the words “Stay High” “Stay Home,” and supported at its base by the commemorative slogan: “R.I.P. 4/20/2020.” The mark represented the death of outdated modes of existence and invited a bright future where home is at the heart of everything we do. 

It was a lot for a logo, so we simplified it to fit places where our tombstone wouldn’t. In its most evolved form, “The Bakery” is stacked inside the silhouette of a Rafflesia Arnoldii, the ever-present, all-seeing eye peeking out from the counter of the capital ‘A’. This simple mark is both trippy and unexpected, warm and polished. It’s neither too sweet nor too salty. Just like a nice, thick slice of Texas toast, dripping with homemade weed ghee.