Boundary Conditions

Boundary Conditions was a group exhibition organised by Gareth Gardner at his Deptford gallery in September 2023. The show brought together four photographers – Gareth himself, accompanied by Freddie Miller, Jérôme Favre and Danilo Murru – to produce new work examining Deptford’s Pepys Estate.

The exhibition coincided with ‘Wide-Angle View’, which was held at the RIBA. Both shows celebrated the influence of Manplan, a series of special issues published by The Architectural Review in 1969.

Gareth asked me to design the identity and graphics for his exhibition. I looked closely at the radical typography and layouts of Manplan, designed over 50 years ago, and took inspiration from this seminal piece of publishing. The headline typeface from the magazine, Neil Bold, simply had to be used, full of 60s quirky character. The numerals in particular are brilliant, so these were used to distinguish each of the four artists, along with a palette of mid-century inspired colours.

Without wishing to create a facsimile or pastiche of Manplan, a more restrained, contemporary typographic approach worked alongside the impactful headlines. For the promotional material, photographs from each artist were reproduced as black & white halftones, a graphic aesthetic that helped tie the four different projects together.