Sounds of the Pub
Cogs & Marvel [in-house brand experience]
Role: Creative Director
Executive Creative Director: Jamie Shaw
Art Director/Illustrator: Clara Dudley
Art Director: Johnny Gore
Sound/Web Design: CLTV Films
The reassuring clink of glass on glass. The bite of a cold pint on your lips, elbows jostling with your neighbour. All the while, the rhythm of the session winds its way from person to person, buoyed by bursts of laughter, all boisterous and joyous and unaware of itself.
Of all the pieces of experiential work I’ve done, I think this one might be the most meaningful to me. In 2021, was asked to come up with an in-house brand experience for St Patrick’s Day, our second under strict lockdown restrictions. Irishness, to me, is a culture founded on connection; the wit, the good-natured mockery, the craic agus ceol. It seemed particularly poignant that so many people around the country, and around the world, would be celebrating that culture in isolation. So, we partnered with our friends at the Dublin-based film company CLTV Films to create Sounds of the Pub a bespoke audio experience inspired by this desire for cultural connection.
‘Sounds of the Pub’ offered users an interactive and customisable experience, allowing them to recreate the ambience of their own bespoke local, wherever they happened to be celebrating. Seven custom-made audio sliders recalled some of the most recognisable Irish pub sounds, ranging from a crackling fireplace to inane pub chatter, from clinking glassware to the familiar refrain of rain on the windows.
Our design team, led by visionary artist Clara Dudley, developed a striking visual identity that leaned on references from contemporary Irish hand-drawn illustration, to modernised pub signage typography. The warm, almost naïve imagery evoked the sense of a really welcoming space, which ran throughout the project, from the social media assets to the UI.
In truth, I expected Sounds of the Pub to resonate with Irish audiences, both at home and among the diaspora. I did not expect it to go global in the way it did. In the first 24 hours alone, as the site spread across social channels, forums, and mobile apps, it reached over 50,000 unique visitors. By the first 48 hours after launch, it had broken a quarter of a million page views across every continent. Newspapers picked up the story, with articles being published everywhere from Lima to Beijing, the longing for connection implicit in the piece seemingly striking a chord with international audiences in a moment of unprecedented global isolation.
I love this piece because, despite the warm aesthetic, it appealed to a subtextual undercurrent of melancholy, and quietly revelled in it. More than that, I love it because it feels, to me, like it made a statement about Irishness at an important moment in our shared cultural history, that struck a remarkable chord with an audience far beyond our island.