Behind the scenes of the award-winning retro-future design by SevenPoint Interiors
When Green Qween co-founders Andrés Rigal and Taylor Bazley were awarded the only social equity license out of 40 applicants for a cannabis dispensary in Downtown Los Angeles, they wanted to create a retail environment that embraced the company’s identity as a “qweer” brand without alienating non-LGBTQIA+ customers.
To achieve the right look and feel, Rigal and Bazley enlisted SevenPoint Interiors, one of the leading retail design and manufacturing companies focused on the cannabis industry, to develop the Green Qween brand from the ground up, ultimately transforming a century-old building into a modern retail masterpiece.
“This was a collaborative partnership, and we are very happy to have had the creative freedom to bring their vision, voice and expression of the dispensary to life while also preserving the history of the space,” says SevenPoint creative director Desmond Chan.
Retro-future aesthetic
The centerpiece of the Green Qween retail space is the building itself, originally a bank built in the 1930s. The art deco building, located in the South Park neighborhood of Downtown Los Angeles, “created a foundation for authenticity,” Chan says.
“Andrés and Taylor wanted to achieve the perfect balance between a tasteful celebration of the building’s aesthetic heritage, the required functionality of a cannabis retail operation and the elevated aesthetics of the local community that represents DTLA,” says Randy Simmen, SevenPoint’s head of design.
The art deco theme resonates throughout the shop, with playful color blocking and large-scale repetition of custom-designed arches and fixtures. Each display provides a “shop-in-shop” experience, allowing Green Qween to highlight other LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC-owned cannabis brands.
“The Green Qween interior promotes an open opportunity to interact with multiple vendors through a cohesive visual experience, unified by repetitive dimensional geometry, iridescent finishes and a serene retro-future aesthetic,” says lead designer Jano Badovinac.
While the company aims to be an incubator for a variety of marginalized cannabis brands, inclusivity is a core tenement for Green Qween. In lieu of over-the-top rainbow imagery, Green Qween is highlighted with dichroic accents that paint the space in a prism of light. The color palette features refreshing apricot and tranquil blue, combined with clean white details, bringing to life the 1980s Miami vibe that Rigal and Bazley envisioned. A giant disco ball embedded in the back wall serves as the pièce de résistance. The overall look and layout is simultaneously timeless and modern, earning the Green Qween project a 2022 Clio Award for brand design in the retail category.
Design details
The foundation of the Green Qween design was laid long before the first coat of paint was applied or the flooring was installed.
For every project SevenPoint embarks upon, the company starts with an in-depth questionnaire that sets the stage for the needs, wants and design direction of the client.
In the case of Green Qween, SevenPoint had the benefit of creating the brand from the ground up, giving it the latitude to produce the colorful, whimsical, fluid and playful elements the clients desired. After the questionnaire provides the design team with direction in terms of the clients’ likes and dislikes, a mood board and list of keywords are created to guide the next steps in the process and further align the designers’ plan with the clients’ aesthetic vision for the brand.
For Green Qween, the keywords were chic, powerful, dynamic, elevated, inspiring, fabulous, forward-thinking, queer, fluid, proud, next gen, ground-breaking, community-driven, confident and extra. From there, SevenPoint started developing the logo, selecting a font that would accomplish the mature, elevated aesthetic desired by Rigal and Bazley, and concurrently integrating that with the early stages of the retail design, such as mapping out the customer journey and mocking up a graphic of the exterior façade to show what it would look like with the branding in place.
The mature, elevated styling of the logo is consistent with the interior design where classic art deco elements are combined with a splash of the futuristic, resulting in a unique but comfortable retail experience.
Manufacturing capabilities
One of the challenges of the project was designing the series of arched fixtures that would house the displays and product, giving Green Qween both the functionality and style it needed, as well as the flexibility of the “shop-in-shop” experience.
“Faced with time and budget constraints, our solution was to build the arches using metal tubes in repetition,” Simmen says. “This removed the need for custom tooling and setups, and greatly improved the lead time while maintaining the design aesthetics.”
These arches exemplify the benefit of SevenPoint being a vertically integrated designer and manufacturer.
The company’s state-of-the-art manufacturing capabilities give the design firm a level of flexibility and creativity that is unparalleled in the cannabis space.
“Being vertically integrated with manufacturing at our fingertips allows us to react quickly and value-engineer our designs to meet budgets and timelines,” Simmen says.
But most importantly, the elegant branding, the timeless retail design and the ability to create components and fixtures from scratch, if needed, were exactly what the Green Qween founders were looking for.
“Working with SevenPoint Interiors has been amazing,” Rigal says. “They listened to my vision and helped shape and focus the color and design elements to achieve the bright and inviting space that we have today.”