Puff Puff Pass: Commercial Mural for Cannabis Retail
Cannabis retail in Canada occupies a peculiar architectural position. Regulatory constraints dictate what can and cannot be communicated on a storefront. Branding guidelines are strict. Window displays are limited. The exterior vocabulary available to a dispensary is, by design, restrained. Which means that when a space does find an opportunity to express identity, it needs to do so with precision and conviction.
Puff Puff Pass was that opportunity. KINN Studios was commissioned to create a large-scale commercial mural for a Calgary cannabis retail location, a piece that would serve simultaneously as brand identifier, street-level wayfinding, and genuine artwork. Not a logo enlarged to fill a wall. Not a graphic treatment masquerading as art. A mural with the compositional integrity to stand on its own and the commercial intelligence to serve the business it belongs to.
Commercial art earns its place when it gives more to the street than it asks of the customer.
The Approach
The design language was developed to occupy the intersection of boldness and sophistication. Cannabis retail branding in Calgary too often defaults to either sterile minimalism or heavy-handed counterculture. Neither felt appropriate here. The mural needed to signal approachability without sacrificing edge, and personality without descending into parody. It needed to feel contemporary, confident, and unmistakably intentional.
KINN Studios worked at full architectural scale, developing the composition to respond to the specific dimensions and sightlines of the facade. The colour palette was calibrated for maximum visual impact at street level while maintaining the tonal range and subtlety that distinguishes a mural from a billboard. Every element was resolved on the wall itself, with adjustments made in real time as the painting progressed and the relationship between surface, light, and surrounding streetscape revealed itself.
The Impact
The finished work transforms the retail location from a regulatory-compliant storefront into a cultural landmark within its block. It gives the business an identity that no signage package could achieve, one rooted in craft, in the physical evidence of a human hand working at architectural scale. Pedestrians photograph it. Neighbouring businesses benefit from the visual energy it introduces to the streetscape.
This is the value proposition of commercial mural art at its best: a single investment that simultaneously strengthens brand identity, enhances the public realm, and contributes something of genuine cultural value to the neighbourhood. Puff Puff Pass demonstrates that commercial imperatives and artistic integrity are not competing interests. When the work is good, they are the same thing.