Horace Tong
Nocturnal Identity System
2024
Brand, spatial experience and project photography
Commissioned by Pistol Cocktail Bar, Hong Kong
Made as Collaboration
My role I worked across brand, marketing, visual direction, spatial experience and programming as part of the founding team.
Pistol Cocktail Bar is a venue project combining brand, marketing and the experience of the space. As part of the founding team, I contributed to visuals, spatial decisions and programming. The two photo series below document the interior and the cocktail imagery separately.
The content lacked a distinct visual system: posts read as a series of separate promotions rather than one world.
I developed the Five Elements concept and used it to create a more coherent content direction across selected posts and reels.
Owner record of the founding team and brand work. No third-party evidence on file.
Interior · Pistol Cocktail BarThe five elements
A photographic record of the bar counter, lounge seating and lighting. These images show the physical setting of the Pistol project. My recorded role covers the founding team, brand and marketing; the photographs are drawn from the project archive.
A photographic series presenting five cocktails: Water, Fire, Metal, Wood and Earth. Close views focus on the drinks, glassware and surrounding textures. Selected from the Pistol project archive, this series presents the drinks separately from the interior documentation.
Project ownership
Horace Tong
Founding team
Creative ownership
Horace Tong
Owned end to end
Collaborative input
Horace Tong
Worked alongside the wider team
Photographs shown here are selected from the project archive and are not necessarily photographed by the author.
Not necessarily. What this project needed was a visual system behind the content and the room rather than a new name: the posts read as separate promotions until a direction held them together.
That is how this project ran. Brand, marketing, visual direction and space design were mine; service experience stayed with the bar manager; programming and operations were shared. The first thing to settle is which decisions are whose.
Whatever the credits say, and nothing else. On this project that is brand and marketing, visual direction and space design. The bar's service experience belongs to the bar manager, and is credited that way.
The same move applies to any business with a physical front and a digital one: settle the name and the visual system first, then let the room, the menu and the feed follow one idea.
Related work
Tell me what you want to make. This project will be included as a reference.
