Homeless Fonts
Homeless Fonts is an idea by Arrels Foundation who work with homeless people to raise their self respect, esteem and standards of living in Barcelona. The concept takes cardboard sign handwriting of homeless people and creates fonts for purchase by companies and designers around the world. The interesting part is that it portrays the homeless as human beings, not just bums and gives them a sense of worth. One story in particular stood out:
Valonga are a huge Spanish company selling olive oil, nuts and wine. They’ve used a design featuring Loraine’s typeface on their labels. It looks great: unusual, bold and striking. The TV camera followed Loraine when she first saw her typeface on an entire display of bottles in a shop. The look on her face was like the sun coming out. She cried out to the camera “That’s mine I did that”. Then quietly, just to herself, she said “See, I can do things, I’m not useless”. And you could see a human being gradually getting rebuilt.
GoodFromYou Arrels Foundation
