Homelessness,research

Homeless artifact research

Ryan Goldsmith

Street Smart• This is a campaign poster for an organization

called street smart which is located in Scotland. Their aim is to help the homeless get back on their feet.

• This poster is simplistic and to the point the layout of the images that they have used is set out to look like a plate of food, this could mean that these people like to aid the homeless in getting food, but there is a pound coin representing the plate on the image this gives a double meaning to it.

• The fonts that have been used are very clear and easy to read, the words “street smart” have been done in a larger font than the rest of the text, this enables the name of the organization to stand out. They have also used both regular and bold fonts to do the two different words this also helps draw your attention to those specific words.

Help the homeless• This is a poster for the charity “Help the

homeless”, it is a simple poster which comprises of only a few elements. The fonts that has been used is a simple clean and clear one, this makes it easy and quick to read. They have used a hierarchical approach to the way in which they have presented the three words on the page, they have all been presented in what they obviously see is the level of importance and which will have the most impact.

• The image that has been used is of a pathway leading to a house in the distance which is essentially showing the aim that this company has which is to find the homeless a home.

• They have chosen to use a green color which is generally seen as a welcoming and soft color as oppose to the more harsh colors like red or black.

SASH• This is the annual review of the organization SASH,

this gives a run through of the years events and some of the statistics from the past year to show what sort of impact that they have had that particular year.

• The product itself is in the shape of a house which obviously represents a lot when running a charity such as this.

• The front is very simple containing just the name of the company and then some text saying “preventing youth homelessness together annual review 2012-2013”

• The company name has been done in a large font so that it is the first thing you notice. They have chosen to use white for the text and this makes it stand out against the green background.

• The choice of green as their color is one which is fairly new, they recently switched from their original color which was red because they felt that green gives a more welcoming tone to the product rather than red.

• Inside this publication there are also some quotes from people that have benefitted from the help of SASH and all the things that they have to say are all positive and up beat about how helpful they found SASH to be.

Porch light• This is a leaflet designed to help people that are

homeless. It is to try and get people to let them know of any people that they know of that are homeless so that they can try to help them.

• The image that they have used for this leaflet is one of a homeless person asleep at night. The image being taken at night helps to add to the sense that this is a dark thing and that it is bad.

• The fonts that they have used are quite bold and therefore easy to read. They have used a very large font size for “don’t just walk past” this helps to make it easy to read and jumps out before anything else. They have also used yellow in order to help emphasize specific words.

• It looks as though yellow is their color of choice this is quite a strong color which can be used to drive home a point.

Shelter• This is the home page of an organization called

Shelter. They focus on helping the homeless in England and Scotland.

• They often use very powerful and dark images for their website, this is obviously for the shock factor and hoping that this will have a greater effect on peoples attitudes towards the current situation with the homeless. For instance this image is of a street that is completely sodden with the rain and this makes people think about how horrible it would be to be stuck out in that weather for the night.

• The colors that they have chosen are red and white they help to give a nice contrast against the dark backgrounds which ensures that the information they are trying to get across is easy to read.

• The tone of the whole website is quite down as the entire thing is essentially pleading for help and waning people to show some sympathy for those who are homeless.

Roundabout • This is a website called Roundabout, they are

based in Sheffield.• One of the first things that you notice about

their website is the colors that they use, they are all very bright and vibrant colors which help to give off that sense of positivity.

• They use a rolling set of images which cycle trough on the webpage. The images that they use help to reinforce positivity as the people involved look as though they are enjoying themselves.

• The tone of this website seems to be quite up beat and positive as oppose to the previous one, Shelter which essentially had the opposite feel to it.

• The fonts that they have chosen are quite soft as they have quite rounded edges

Billboard by homeless person• This is a billboard that has been made by this

homeless man “Danny” he has set this up to try and get some donations so that he can find a place to live.

• He has used clear text in order to ensure that it is legible from a distance so that the greatest number of people will see his message.

• He has used brown card for one of the parts of the board, this is probably because brown card is often thought of when you think of homeless people as it is often what they have to sleep on.

• There is quite a large amount of information on the board, there are multiple messages on it.