Mootee Bar
A celebrated, experimental cocktail bar known for its unique drinks inspired by African culture, traditional medicine (“muti”), and local ingredients, offering a sensory and narrative experience through innovative mixology and art. It gained international recognition through multiple global pop-ups and nominations for prestigious global bar awards.
My role was to lead the art direction and execute all design deliverables, spanning menus, product visuals, marketing collateral, and motion graphics.
The challenge
This was a new international bar concept in its infancy, with limited existing assets and no established visual system. The challenge was to define the art direction and create design materials that could authentically reflect the layered energy of the bar itself – humorous and spiritual, modern and traditional, artful and informal – all at once.
Strategy
Rather than designing a rigid identity, I drew inspiration from the real local world – building a flexible framework based on how objects are reused, labeled, and recontextualized. Familiar forms like medicine bottles, signage, and informal graphics like collages became visual anchors, grounding the brand culturally while keeping it both adaptable, yet consistent in approach across touchpoints.
This approach led design consistency to be defined more as an attitude and process rather than a rigid structure, allowing engagement through emotion and familiarity.
Creation
Loosely place visuals and treatments such as cut-out graphics were intentionally composited to feel, fast, imperfect, and almost improvised – mimicking physical collage rather than traditional brand elements.
Compositions we created to feel raw and expressive while still being deliberately composed to appeal to it’s target audience. This approach allowed the visuals to move quickly without losing cohesion.
Delivery
Mootee Bar received an assortment of design materials it required to function as a bar, but in addition, it’s brand now had the flexibility to evolve without losing its identity. The result was a body of work that feels alive, expressive, and unmistakably rooted in place – capturing the energy of the bar experience and giving the brand a distinctive unique voice in a competitive, international context.
