Artificial Intelligence (AI) has emerged as a disruptive technology in nearly every industry and sector imaginable, and graphic design is no exception. For entrepreneurs Jorge Olson and Sandro Piancone, founders of hemp-infused products company Hempacco, AI has become another valuable tool in their well-stocked packaging design toolbox. Most recently, AI assisted Hempacco in solving a formidable challenge while designing the graphics for a new gummy product for none other than rap icon Snoop Dogg.
Based in California, Hempacco develops and manufactures hemp-based products under its own brand as well as through joint ventures. Products include vapes, hemp cigarettes, hemp blunt smoking papers, gummies, capsules, pills, chocolates, shots, tinctures, and a line of beauty products and neutraceuticals, all produced at Hempacco’s three facilities—two in San Diego and one in Tijuana, Mexico. Among Hempacco’s celebrity partnerships is a joint venture company, HPSD, Inc., with Snoop Dogg, formed to create a line of hemp-derived products under the Dogg lbs brand name.
Since launching its first hemp cigarette product, Real Stuff Hemp Smokables, in 2017, Hempacco has produced all packaging graphics in-house, led by Olson. “For our packaging, I’m privileged to work with an incredible team of Mexican American artists from the Tijuana-San Diego border region that make me look good,” says Olson. “Hempacco has an unfair advantage here because of our location and relationship with artists. You see, my mother is an artist, her husband just retired from teaching art at the university, and he’s an art curator and artist, and both are my mentors. My cousins are artists, and I belong to a community of border artists that help us develop a unique style that can only come from a vast artistic community.”
Given this tremendous wealth of artistic resources, it may seem curious that Olson looked to AI for help when designing the packaging for the first product under the Dogg lbs brand. The most problematic part of the design, however, was the most important element: a picture of Snoop Dogg.
“We had the most challenging time finding one that Snoop liked or one we could buy the rights to use in our packaging,” explains Olson. “After six weeks of looking for photos, our project was six weeks late going into production. I generated over 200 images using AI for Snoop and the packaging idea. I thought I had some winners, but Snoop and Tiffany Chin, Snoop’s CEO of everything hemp and cannabis, shot down the concepts. That’s when I decided to go to the ‘Big Guns.’”
The Big Guns Olson refers to was his friend, Gustav Mayoral, owner of AI company Code Agents, who Olson says “has the rare combination of being a software architect and a professional photographer,” as well as an award-winning artist. He adds, “Gustavo ran his proprietary algorithm to generate Snoop images in different styles and poses. This process took a few days until, jackpot, we had the perfect image that matched the Dogg lbs brand.”
Olson shares that Mayoral’s process is the first to train AI to learn the product—everything from details of the product to imaging and design styles. Once that’s achieved, the platform is instructed to build deliverables, such as images, art design, and copy. From there, Hempacco incorporates a normal workflow for the artwork, involving its full graphic design team.
The final artwork for Snoop Dogg’s Dogg lbs Dog Treats Gummies pouch package includes the AI-generated image of Snoop Dogg, edited and enhanced by Hempacco’s graphic designers, against a deep purple background decorated with a gold paisley-style pattern. At the bottom is a band of color, either blue, purple, or red, corresponding respectively to the three flavor varieties available, Blue Raspberry, Grape, and Cherry Lemon. A QR code links to an augmented reality feature, Snoop Talk, that allows the consumer to view an AR-generated version of Snoop moving and talking.
Of its use of AI, Olson says that thus far Hempacco has used technology to scale its traditional creative process to create assets, including logos, art conceptualizations, human-like and product imaging, AR, 3D rendering, and voice generation. “In the future, as we develop our toolset, we will be automating even further,” he adds. “For example, in our pipeline, we’re working towards the ability for AI to test packaging online, getting hundreds of thousands of inputs from our target market in a week, redesigning, and testing again until we get the best results, even pre-orders, from our perfect consumers.”
Answering the million-dollar question as to whether AI will ultimately negate the need for graphic designers, Olson says he doesn’t see that happening. “I see designers working differently, just like computers didn’t replace people, they made people more effective,” he explains. “Right now, Gustavo of Code Agents and I are the ones that use AI to program what we need and then give it to the designers to change, fix, enhance, brand, etc. In the future, designers will do all of that on their own. It will be part of the job to learn AI prompt programming.” PW
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