Wunder Werkz brands Close Company, Death & Co’s neighbourhood bar

Death & Co redefined American cocktail culture through precision and ritual. Their bars became temples of technique, places where drinks arrived with the gravity of ceremony and the meticulous craft of watchmaking. Close Company represents the group’s deliberate pivot towards something looser: a concept designed for gathering rather than reverence, opening across Nashville, Atlanta and Las Vegas with the technical mastery Death & Co built its reputation on, wrapped in the warmth of a neighbourhood dive. Denver-based design studio Wunder Werkz developed the brand direction and visual system, drawing from an era when bars lived through local lore and word of mouth. The reference points span old Yellow Pages advertisements, vintage matchbooks and blues posters – pre-digital vernacular design that communicated fast, demanded to be remembered, and lived in the real world rather than on screens. At the centre of the identity sits a custom-built Wingding typeface – an entire iconographic language designed specifically for Close Company. These aren’t emojis but something older and more tactile: icons that feel worn, familiar and lived-in before anyone’s touched them. The glyph set balances symbols that read as informative and directional like arrows, phones and mailboxes – with icons specific to Close Company’s world: think drinks, music and late nights. “A lot of the glyphs are rooted in connection,” explains Jon Hartman, Partner at Wunder Werkz. “The rest of the set speaks more directly to the offering and good times with friends. If a symbol didn’t further that story, it didn’t make the cut.”