Between 2022 and 2023, I led the art direction and design for multiple seasonal and promotional campaigns for March and Ash and Pácabol — two legal cannabis dispensaries based in San Diego, California. Working in a heavily regulated industry where paid advertising on major platforms is largely restricted, every campaign had to do more with less: compelling visuals distributed through owned channels, organic social, email, and in-store digital signage.
Master Graphics for Cannabis Campaigns
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Art Direction
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Photo Compositing
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Multi-format Adaptation
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Social Media Design
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AI Generated Graphics
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Digital & Print Production
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Art Direction ✳︎ Photo Compositing ✳︎ Multi-format Adaptation ✳︎ Social Media Design ✳︎ AI Generated Graphics ✳︎ Digital & Print Production ✳︎
Designing for a regulated industry
Cannabis brands in California face strict advertising restrictions — no Google Ads, no Meta campaigns, no conventional paid media. That means every dollar of visual attention has to be earned through design alone. The work needed to be bold enough to stop the scroll, compliant enough to run across all platforms, and flexible enough to live across a dozen different formats from a single concept.
March and Ash — Valentine's Day Gift Guide
For Valentine's Day, the challenge was making cannabis feel like a natural, desirable gift. I built a floral bouquet composited from buds, joints, roses, and edibles — warm, celebratory, and completely unexpected. The campaign ran as a multi-format social push with a scannable QR code integrated directly into the visual.
Pácabol — Cyber Monday
Pácabol's Cyber Monday campaign had a completely different energy — chaotic, fun, and brand-forward. I designed a hero landing page banner and mobile version featuring an alpaca mascot surrounded by floating products, star bursts, and hand-drawn graphic elements. The controlled chaos gave the brand a distinct personality at a moment when everyone else was running the same blue discount banners.
March and Ash — Fresh Baked Takeover Weekend
A weekend-only promotion for Fresh Baked pre-rolls required urgency, scale, and visual drama. I composited oversized pre-roll tubes rising above the San Diego skyline — treating the product like city landmarks. The master horizontal graphic anchored the campaign, and was then adapted into a story, two feed sizes, and an email banner, all preserving the cinematic mood.
March and Ash — 420 Presale
The 420 Presale campaign leaned into a retro-Y2K aesthetic — a vintage desktop computer displaying the discount, surrounded by floating brand products. The playful, nostalgic tone created contrast against typical dispensary marketing, and the discount code was built into the visual itself to drive direct online conversions.
March and Ash — Free Delivery Billboard
This billboard for March and Ash ran along Mission Beach, one of San Diego's most trafficked coastal strips. The concept centered on surfboards composited into a coastal scene — each board representing a store location, doubling as a map and a lifestyle statement. Cannabis is never shown. The scene does all the work. Designed at billboard scale and produced for large-format print.
Each campaign started with a concept and rough moodboard, then moved into Photoshop for compositing. I built the scenes layer by layer — sourcing and masking product shots, integrating them into environmental backdrops (cityscapes, themed sets), and adding lighting, smoke, and atmospheric elements to unify the composite. The goal was always for the result to feel like it was shot that way, not assembled.
Process
What I took away
Working in cannabis taught me that constraints are a creative brief in themselves. When you can't buy attention, you have to design for it. Photo compositing became my main tool for creating scenes that wouldn't exist otherwise — and for making a product that can't be photographed in a traditional advertising context feel premium, aspirational, and alive. That's a skill set that travels.