Founded by wife and wife team, Faun Chapin and M Paradise, the two branding and design masterminds have crafted a myriad of visual products for brands with their design studio, Guts and Glory and now have placed their creative expertise in design and packaging into their Mendocino-based cannabis brand, Sonder.
We first came across Sonder during season 3 of Hall of Flowers and this past fall and were immediately attracted to their vibrant packaging and since then, we’ve been curious about their origins and creations.
Co-founder Faun has had cannabis in her life early on, as a second generation grower and passed down knowledge from her mother, who was an Emerald Triangle farmer in the 70’s and 80’s and made a living cultivating the cannabis plant and took care of Faun’s design MFA Degree from Yale. Today, Sonder’s flower comes from Faun’s brother, Leif and his wife Jessica Bolton (another second generation female grower) that own a licensed grow in the mountains of Mendocino.
The packaging isn’t the only attractive element for Sonder. During our brief chat at Hall of Flowers, the founders sense of fashion style matches and feels organic, just like the cannabis oil they produce. Sonder isn’t just visual breath of fresh air within the market but the core team represents actual diversity, with team members including queer, gay, heteronormative, POC and non-binary individuals from a variety of different industries.
Sonder offers a variety of strains and we got our hands on their Gorilla No. 4, Do Si Do and Blue Dream cannabis oil cartridges. At the first pull of their Gorilla No. 4, you immediately taste and recognize the purity of cannabis in their oil. In a world, where untrustworthy and black market cartridges have affected users for the worst and not providing any experience relatable to cannabis, Sonder provides that sigh of relief we all need and crave!
Sonder openly shares their process into how they make their products and they begin by using supercritical CO2 extraction to gently wash the plant over time, slowly releasing the wide variety of cannabinoids and terpenes naturally present within the plant, it then winterized, where it is mixed with 100% organic ethanol, cooled, and filtered multiple times to remove these desirable fats and waxes. In the final stage, Sonder recaptures the ethanol through distillation, leaving behind an oil that ranges in color from dark amber to golden honey depending on the strain and trichome maturation when the plant was harvested.
Currently, there are two new product lines in development with plans to launch both in 2020 and we’re excited to see what these ladies have up their sleeve.
As we’re all hunkered down and taking shelter indoors, Sonder has made themselves available at these notable retailers for delivery in Los Angeles: Sweet Flower and San Francisco: Cal St. Canna.
