Designing Tension
From Branding to Product Storytelling for Heavy Hitters
Category:
Branding & Product prmotion
Author:
Gary Lau
Read:
10 mins
Location:
Los Angeles
Date:
May 1, 2025
Balancing clarity and impact in a saturated space:
Designing for a category as crowded as cannabis forces a simple question: How do we say more by showing less? Heavy Hitters didn’t need decoration. It needed definition. The challenge wasn’t just to make the visuals “pop.” It was to strip the noise, keep the pressure, and make space for the brand’s edge to breathe. These weren’t just layouts. They were visual systems that had to fight for attention—while still staying elegant enough to be remembered. When we reimagined the brand’s visual language—from digital packaging to campaign assets—we built frameworks that flexed. A design system that could evolve, adapt, and respond to context, without ever losing its attitude. Every component had a job. Every margin had a reason. And every pixel had to carry weight.
Building tension between product and identity:
The more I worked on the rollout, the more I realized: the product isn’t the hero. The feeling is. So we moved beyond showing product. We shaped tension. The right amount of contrast. The right kind of restraint. Motion that hinted at control—but never chaos. Crops that invited curiosity. Shadows that lingered. Silence between beats. Every drop, every shot, every layout was built to preserve that edge—because that’s where the identity lived. We weren’t designing “assets.” We were building story fragments: – a corner of packaging barely in frame – a logo that holds back just long enough – typography that pulses with discipline, not ego And suddenly, the product doesn’t just exist on screen. It lives in your head.
Designing emotion through rhythm, restraint, and visual hierarchy:
It’s easy to forget that hierarchy is emotional. That space can shout louder than text. In digital design, restraint is radical. So we leaned into it. We started treating white space as silence. Typography as tone. Lighting as narrative. Each decision had to feel lived-in—like it already belonged to the world Heavy Hitters was building. And when every layer played its part—form, structure, texture, rhythm—we moved past “launch campaign” into something deeper: a visual memory. One that doesn’t just tell you what the product is. But how it should feel to hold it.
