Chris Znerold Product + Brand Systems · AI Design Engineering

Between the Meetings

Creative director for Speakeasy, 2024 Launched, 2024

Speakeasy campaign key art on a phone in dappled light: the wordmark above the line “Where the bold navigate the unseen.”

Strategy:

Speakeasy sells access to other operators. The identity had to make that feel like a room you were let into rather than a list you bought.

Design:

Cream on black, and a wordmark set to bleed. A mailer with a metal key cut as the maze monogram, a printed volume, and the member platform on one screen.

Leadership:

I was the director at Portal, across the brand identity and the member platform, working directly with the founder. Nothing existed before it. Launched 2024.

Product in Hand

One wordmark, coaster to billboard.

The system runs from a coaster to a billboard without the wordmark being redrawn for either. In the envelope, a metal key whose head is the maze monogram.

Left: a stack of Speakeasy coasters on a wooden table. Right: an illuminated projecting sign carrying the maze monogram above the wordmark.
A cream envelope printed “for mastermind eyes only” beside a metal key whose head is cut as the Speakeasy maze monogram.

Product in Life

Once a month, in person.

Once a month you sit in a room in your city with other people who run companies. The platform carries the other weeks: your mastermind, and your progress through the level.

Print

The volume members keep.

A printed volume, ‘Volume I: Generative AI, demand gen’, is the other object members keep. Cream on black at the size of a book, the wordmark set to bleed.

An open Speakeasy-branded printed volume, the cover reading “Volume I: Generative AI, demand gen”.

Brand book

Rules that outlive the launch.

The team gets the wordmark, the key, the palette and the voice, so the next hire starts from the system rather than a moodboard.

Brand book01/14
The brand guidelines cover: Speakeasy set to bleed over a black-and-white photograph of two people at a table, Version 1.0, August 2024
Section divider: Brand Identity, on charcoal
Primary logo: Speakeasy, and Speakeasy mastermind with the category label beneath
Secondary logo: the labyrinth key symbol over the wordmark, on charcoal, on shell and on sky
Symbol: the labyrinth key on cream, on shell, on charcoal and on sky
Logo minimums: the wordmark and the key from four inches down to a quarter inch
Clear space: the wordmark and the key on their grids
Incorrect use: six things not to do with the logo
Color palette: Coal, Graphite, Sky, Shell, Sand and Salt
Typography: the wordmark face, Blauer Nue as the primary typeface and Franie as the secondary
Iconography: a set of bold line icons for the platform
Abstract photography: black-and-white geometry, mazes, a cube, a spiral
Lifestyle photography: introspective black-and-white portraits, a raised fist, a lit sign reading Gold Wanted
Brand copy: beyond the obvious lies the extraordinary, don’t follow the path, create it, in the labyrinth clarity is power

Product in Culture

Lonely in a specific way.

Running a company is lonely in a specific way: nobody on the payroll can be told everything. Masterminds sell the room where you can, and a membership brand trades on the door.

A building-scale Speakeasy billboard reading “become a mastermind” above a row of lit windows.
Position:

Head of Brand & Product at Portal

Services:

Identity, platform

Partner:

Speakeasy

Status:

Launched, 2024