John Howrey, Design LeaderFor new work
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Experiment · shipped

The Broadway Oracle

A printed Broadway-lyric oracle deck and a daily-pull social reel

The Broadway Oracle deck on white marble: a black-and-royal-blue tuck box at the top of the frame with the THE BROADWAY ORACLE wordmark on the side, and a deck of cards splayed on the marble below. Each card shows a royal-blue back with white linework: twin theatre spotlights, a stage curtain, a sun-ray oracle emblem reading THE BROADWAY ORACLE, and zigzag borders that read as marquee bunting.

The Broadway Oracle is a real, printed, shipping deck of Broadway-lyric oracle cards. You pull one in the morning, read the line, and start the day on it.

The deck gets a second life as a daily reel on Instagram. Each morning a card gets pulled on camera. The deck shuffles. The camera moves overhead. The caption reads "Today's Broadway Oracle." It's a small way to share a card with people every day.

In motion

Shuffle. Fan. Pull.

This deck is built for doing: you shuffle it, cut it, fan it, and let the card land. The motion below shows the actual rhythm of using it, riffling, cutting, fanning, and revealing. Each clip plays on loop because the action is the design.

The card back

Two spotlights, one curtain.

The card back is the brand. It shows two stage spotlights crossing over a curtained proscenium, a star-bordered bunting along the top and bottom edge in scallop and zigzag, and a sun-ray oracle emblem at the center reading THE BROADWAY ORACLE. It's white line-art on royal-blue, printed on a black tuck box: a theatre marquee dressed in tarot vocabulary.

The card-back artwork: a black field with white line-art rendering twin spotlights crossing over a stage curtain, a sun-ray oracle emblem in the center reading THE BROADWAY ORACLE, and zigzag/scallop borders that read as marquee bunting.A single printed card held to the camera: same composition rendered in white-on-royal-blue, the curtain folds painted into the negative space behind the spotlights, the sun-ray oracle emblem centered, the dimensions and proportions of an actual playing card.

The face

One lyric. One show.

Each face holds one lyric, one show citation, and one piece of art tied to the feeling of the song. "Out of the darkness, into the spotlight" pulls a lightbulb-faced figure in a tuxedo for Everybody's Talking About Jamie. "Elevate Your Spirit" and "Defy Gravity" run as chunky 3D outlined display caps for the unstoppable lift of Wicked. The illustration carries the feeling. The type carries the message.

A printed card face: an illustrated figure in a tuxedo with a glowing yellow-and-pink lightbulb where its head should be, against a black ground. 'Out of the darkness, into the spotlight.' set in white sans body copy across the lower half. 'Everybody's Talking About Jamie' as the small white footer citation.A digital card-face study: black field with ELEVATE YOUR SPIRIT set in chunky 3D outlined display caps stacked across three lines, white outlines with a subtle drop shadow giving the type a marquee-light feel.A digital card-face study: same black field, DEFY GRAVITY set in chunky 3D outlined display caps in two lines. The type leans on its outlines to glow off the ground.

The reel

Today's pull.

Each morning a card gets pulled on camera. The deck shuffles. The camera moves overhead. The caption reads "Today's Broadway Oracle" with the date underneath. The clips below show two morning pulls running on loop, captured on the actual marble counter where the daily reels are shot.

A printed thing like this wants a daily ritual to go with it. The deck is the object; pulling a card every morning is what keeps it alive. On its own, either half is just a souvenir.

Closing