We were commissioned in mid-2009 to create the identity for an art map in the Deptford area of London. The art map would encompass New Cross in the East and Greenwich in the West.

The committee of galleries from Deptford compared themselves to an ‘art communist satellite state’, south of the main London gallery trail (Tate Britain, Tate Modern). We decided to reflect this philosophy through their identity by creating a bespoke typeface, inspired by communist Russian and British typographic references.

We twinned this bespoke typeface with our very own Reader, and created a structured and harked-back typographic style, using only two colours (Fig. 2).

Our initial briefing included details that the map would be re-printed throughout the year. Thus the idea of changing the highlight colour each time was decided as well as reforming the constellation (Fig. 1), representative of the Deptford galleries.