Outdoor ad: Mellow Mushroom: Hajek frnt cover

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Charged by their client, Mellow Mushroom, Atlanta, with creating a promotion that “people would want to steal,” BooneOakley, Charlotte, delivered a series of artist-designed menus intended to support the pizza chain’s brand positioning as “a place of self-expression and imagination,” “a place between reality and possibility.”

(Mellow Mushroom’s individual stores are each uniquely designed and decorated by local artists, and each offers several exclusive “locals only” recipes. Diners can “build your own” from a list of over 40 pizza ingredients. And among the chain-wide pizzas are, for example, the “Holy Shiitake,” with shiitake, button and portobello mushrooms, caramelized onion, mozzarella and montamoré cheeses, garlic aioli, black truffle oil, and a garnish of chives and shaved parm.)

For the menus, BooneOakley reached out to five artists, from Melbourne to Berlin, with suitably fantastical philosophies and styles. Each was given free rein to create an alternate pizza reality, with a full-page, art-only cover (three contain the words “Mellow Mushroom”; two do not), an artist’s bio on the back; and in between, 6 pages of menu items illustrated with dozens of small, weird spot drawings.