One of the most rewarding aspects of working with a world-class museum is the historical research that goes into every phase of launching and marketing a new exhibit.

For our print ads focused on this new exhibit, we included recipes for the actual favorite cocktails of notorious mob bosses. We plastered the elevators to the new exhibit with real archival photography from Prohibition-era parties. And for The Underground itself, we ensured the visual branding reflected the Roaring Twenties of reality, not just fantasy.

To start, we studied typography and layout of that era for both the cocktail menus and spirit labels. We used reference art to identify the way printed materials would have looked at that time, then sourced antique textures to give all the new design elements an aged, dated look and feel.

In designing the cocktail menu, we experimented with fonts, textures, and materials including leather, etched copper, brushed steel, and gold foil before selecting designs robust enough for a bar. The final look of the menus, which incorporated metallic finishes, linked the physical item back to the interior design of the speakeasy and distillery, which used copper as a primary metal. The inside pages were laid out in an Art Deco style, reflective of the Prohibition era.

Each bottle was also strung with a hang tag featuring historical information about each spirit, proving that immersive learning didn’t need to stop when the drinks began.

To promote the new space and welcome guests to its grand unveiling, we created an invitation using a historic grille cipher, a simple decoding method that revealed a mystery message by sliding a pre-cut envelope over the invitation.