AI art and flavour orbitals: How Origin Bar uses graphic design to take patrons on a cocktail journey

SINGAPORE – Choosing a cocktail can feel like a game of chance, especially at a craft cocktail bar, where many of the drinks are signature concoctions proprietary to the venue.

In such a scenario, the physical menu is almost like a security blanket for guests trying to decide what to spend their $30 on.

Most cocktail menus are straightforward – a one- or two-page listing of each concoction’s name, price and ingredients. Some bars include photographs or realistic drawings of the drinks, while others use designs that express the vibe of the venue. 

Some bars choose to describe their drinks with flavour profile attributes, such as “floral” or “smoky”, even as they continue to push the boundaries of conventional cocktail ingredients. 

At Origin Bar, located at the lobby of Shangri-La Singapore in Orange Grove Road, the current Infinity menu ticks some of these boxes. But bar manager Adam Bursik also sees it as another vessel to showcase the venue’s ethos of exploration through mixology.

The approach has won Origin Bar acclaim recently. In May, it was one of three local watering holes named in the inaugural edition of The Pinnacle Guide, a new recognition system for the world’s top bars.

Two months later, Origin Bar made a strong landing at No. 32 in the Asia’s 50 Best Bars ranking for 2024. This was a leap from its No. 95 placing in 2023.

“Our bar is inspired by the idea of journeys and travel, and it’s designed in the style of a train station. For the cocktails in the Infinity menu, we wanted to travel into the future, so to speak, and showcase our most far-fetched ideas in the form of cocktails,” Mr Bursik, who joined Origin Bar in 2017, tells The Straits Times.

“I knew that I didn’t want to actually show the cocktails in the menu itself, whether in the form of photographs or realistic artwork. I wanted to use graphics and design elements that would spark our guests’ imaginations and encourage them to discover every cocktail we have created,” adds the Slovakian, who moved to Singapore some 10 years ago. 

To bring this abstract vision to life, the 30something took matters into his own hands – teaching himself software such as Adobe Illustrator so that he could design every page of the menu.

“I have a great deal of respect for graphic designers; the ones I’ve worked with have done amazing work. But often, what they come up with is not necessarily an exact translation of what I had in mind.

“So I started developing my design skills with labels, posters and even my own Instagram posts. Designing the Infinity menu is the culmination of all that ‘training’,” he says.