Barbur Gallery
An identity for an institution that refuses to sit still.
Scope
Visual identity, design system, print and digital, exhibition identity.
Year: 2025
With: Lars Sergel, Curator
Brief
Jerusalem's artist-run anchor since 2005.
Twenty years in, Barbur had outgrown the scrappy look but refused to dress up as a museum.
Build an identity that reads institutional from across the room. Alive up close.
Challenge
Two gravities. Refinement on one side. Risk on the other.
Most galleries go sterile. We went the other way.
Archival, tactile and precise, holding shape across Hebrew, Arabic, and English.
Process
Mid-century typographic structure as the skeleton. Strict grids. Clear hierarchy.
Scanned textures, faint shadows, the evidence of paper and time.
A system carrying the weight of a document, not the gloss of an ad. Wall texts orient without lecturing.
Digital touchpoints carry the same grain as the printed ones.
Result
Barbur reads as an institution without flattening into one.
Trilingual structure put inclusivity into the system, not the marketing.
A visual voice matching the curatorial one.