CLOSED
A Smuggler’s House
CLOSED began as a new bar in Newcastle.
The venue and architects were already in place, but there was no name, concept or broader idea connecting what the place could become.
The initial conversation was about creating a brand. The work revealed that the venue first needed something more fundamental: an idea people could build around.
- Year
- 2024
- Sector
- Hospitality
- Work
- Brand Strategy, Naming, Visual Identity, Signage & Wayfinding, Website, Print
- With
- Mark Blackler, Sasha Burger
- Role
- Brand Strategy, Creative Direction, Visual Identity, Signage & Wayfinding, Print, Digital Design
- Collaborators
- Jordan Lucky / Playstate — MuralRebecca Whan + Afifa Intanjudin / Patternshop — Interior & ArchitectureStanley House Studio — Photography
- Working Context
- Developed while working with The Colour Club.
- Featured
- The Brand Identity
The idea
A Smuggler’s House.
Newcastle’s history of steelworks, docks, the sea and old trade routes became the starting point for an imagined house filled with things accumulated from elsewhere.
CLOSED emerged during that process.
What began as an example of how the concept might be expressed became the name of the venue itself.
The shift
Instead of designing an identity and then applying it to a bar, the central idea gave the venue a world to inhabit.
CLOSED could be elusive, welcoming and slightly illicit at once — a place that felt discovered rather than announced.
The identity became one part of a larger experience rather than the thing expected to carry all of its meaning.
The system
The world of A Smuggler’s House extends through the identity, cut-out menus, Raw / Rotten / Loud language, signage, photography direction, print, digital applications and details within the physical venue.
Each expression feels like another object, message or fragment belonging to the same place, allowing the idea to remain coherent without requiring every application to look the same.