Biograph Billiards Menu & Branding

Category: Print, Logos & Lettering
Client: Biograph Billiards (Spec Work)

Chicago’s historic Biograph Theater is currently home to Victory Gardens Theater company, but also to a long-empty restaurant and bar space in the front of the theater at street level. The theater is most famous as the location of the FBI’s ambush of gangster John Dillinger in 1934. Photos of the time note a pool hall also occupying the Biograph building called “Biograph Billiards.”

This is some exploratory work for a revival of the “Biograph Billiards” bar as a modern concept in the empty restaurant space inside the Biograph, similar in scope but a smaller scale to Land & Sea Dept.’s “Game Room” in the Chicago Athletic Association.

This concept would showcase post-Prohibition style cocktails and a slightly retro theme without feeling gimmicky. The design draws primarily on the historic neon lettering still found outside the theater.