This document summarizes and analyzes several artifacts related to homelessness. It discusses posters, websites, and a billboard created by organizations and individuals working to help the homeless. The artifacts use images, fonts, colors and layouts designed to convey their messages and aims in an accessible, clear and emotionally impactful way. They seek to raise awareness of homelessness and encourage donations to help people find housing and get back on their feet.

1. Homeless artifact research
Ryan Goldsmith

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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

8. 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.