Two journalism grads, a decade of creative collaboration, and a shared vision to shake up the status quo. Born in the Bay Area just as California legalisation kicked off, The Grass Agency (TGA) brings a bold new perspective to cannabis design. Merging their editorial and design chops with a love for 60s counterculture, they're creating smoking accessories that challenge the industry's aesthetic norms and celebrate creative freedom.
With their range exclusively available in Australia through Astrid Alchemy, we caught up with the duo to dive into their story, design process, and vision for a more imaginative cannabis culture.
How did The Grass Agency come to be?
We met in college in the naughty aughties and really grew up together creatively.
It all started in journalism school (and nearby bars) at the University of Texas in Austin, where Christopher focused on writing and Reena on photojournalism.
After graduation, Christopher moved to the SF Bay Area, where he started his career as a gay porn archivist and award-winning journalist. He eventually landed the top spot at one of the biggest tech publications in the world.
Reena went to design school in Atlanta before making her way to the Bay, where we reunited. As the lead editor and de facto creative director of Engadget, Christopher hired Reena to design everything from editorial illustrations, to trophy designs and environmental graphics for trade shows like CES. After more than a decade of collaboration building brands for other people, we decided to take the leap and start our own.
Flower has always played a part in our friendship but it really took center stage when we started The Grass Agency. TGA was a creative agency first, and an accessories brand second. We bootstrapped our pipes and papers; funding prototyping and production with client work.
What’s the story behind your brand name?
We started as a creative agency for the cannabis industry in 2018, just as legalisation took effect in California. “Grass” is a coded, nostalgic nod to psychedelic counterculture, and “Agency” a hat-tip to the heyday of advertising in the 1960s. We also liked that “agency” could have a spacey, retrofuturistic connotation.
Who are you making products for?
People seeking a more creative existence. We live in a world where conformity is celebrated, where being an “adult” means working, and saving, and doing the practical thing. We wanted people to feel like, at least for a moment, they could put all of the responsibility on a shelf and let their imaginations run wild.
What role do you believe plant-powered products play in the modern wellness space?
Grass is an invitation to pause, reflect, and be creative – to be in touch with yourself in a world obsessed with productivity. Our Superbloom pipes are also based on the design of the chillum, which people all over the world have used in spiritual ceremonies for centuries.
How do you envision the future of plant-powered wellness?
Here in the US, we want to see the plant rescheduled and decriminalised. We want to see prisoners freed, stigmas erased, and we want to see some official respect paid to those people who have suffered from the War on Drugs. If we’re around to see all of that happen, we’ll be happy campers.
What product from your collection are you most excited about right now, and why?
How dare you make us choose! We love both our babies equally. Superbloom is a flower-shaped glass pipe inspired by traditional Indian chillums, with a retrofuturistic twist. It’s beautiful, unique, easy to clean, and portable. It has a great deep bowl that you can fill with flower or hash.
Our organic hemp rolling papers, which double as an astral boarding pass, won a packaging design award, which was an awesome surprise. They’re clever, beautiful, and free of heavy metals which is more than can be said for some big “natural” brands.
Can you share a bit about the creative process behind your products?
There was a time when Indian spirituality played a big part in shaping psychedelic culture and aesthetics. We wanted to capture the mood of that era while also looking to the future.
The chillum seemed like an obvious starting point to us, so we sourced a bunch from India and got to smoking (and concepting). We were drawn to the connection between space travel and astral projection — both of which had a moment in the 1960s.
We focused in on fashion and design of that era, specifically, Emilio Pucci and Alexander Girard’s collaboration on Braniff Airlines. From that discovery period, we made sketches on paper and molded the shape with clay until we were happy with it.
We found an industrial designer who made CAD drawings for us and helped us finalise the design based on material practicality and budget. Once we had a final design, it took months to source the right production partner because our design was so unique. We had the opportunity to make these pieces out of beautiful marble, but ultimately we chose glass so it was easy to clean.
What's been the most surprising aspect of running your business in this niche market?
The people. Sure, working in weed is cool, but it’s so much more than that. We’ve met some of the most amazing, inspiring, and optimistic humans through this plant. We wouldn’t trade those experiences for the world… or any other planet!
What are you most excited about in partnering with astridAlchemy to bring TGA Down Under?
When Astrid Alchemy first contacted us, we had no idea that TGA was the acronym for an Australian governing agency — let alone the one responsible for cannabis regulation. We love a serendipitous opportunity to stick it to the man! But for real, we’re happy to see our products make their way outside the States and we couldn’t have found a better partner or our global debut.
Any last words?
OPT+5/ALT+236 GRASS (IYKYK)
Explore The Grass Agency (TGA), exclusively on astridAlchemy
