Black Monday
Showtime was known for prestige drama. Black Monday was the first real bet on comedy — a show chronicling the 360 days leading up to October 19, 1987, the biggest stock market crash since 1929.
The easy move would have been to lean into comedy tropes. Exaggerated expressions. Winking taglines. Bright, loud, obviously funny. That path got rejected early. Working closely with Seth Rogen, Jordan Cahan, and David Caspe, the creative direction landed on something more unexpected: unironic. Played straight. The humor lives in the writing and the performances — the marketing doesn't try to be funnier than the show.
But first, the initial exploration…
The original brief pushed hard into eighties nostalgia — Oliver Stone's Wall Street, Working Girl, Patrick Nagel's graphic portraiture. Working with Concept Arts, the team exhaustively explored those references before moving on.
The Lookbook
A visual language emerged through a series of EP meetings — sharing images back and forth, testing what resonated, discarding what didn't. The lookbook became the foundation for photography direction, campaign tone, and three seasons of key art, print, on-air, out-of-home, digital, and social.
Midtown 85
One of the photographers presented to the EPs became the visual anchor. As a student in the mid-80's, Michael Lavine spent afternoons with a camera on his hip, randomly shooting passersby in October when the light created the most amazing shadows.
The Logos
The launch called for two custom logos — a vintage sitcom wordmark and a revival of the late-80s-era Showtime logo. Read the Variety article here.
“VHS” press kit
42nd street shuttle wrap
Vintage Newport teaser
Marketing press kit
Interim key art
S3 packaging
Photography overview book
Three years of photography collected into a single volume. The book captures the breadth of imagery produced across every season — a photographic style guide and a resource for new team members and the press department.
