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Homeless Fonts

• Fastidious 12y ago
  Very interesting project, with curious stories and results that can be used by all of us. Very well done!
  • Throwaway823 12y ago
    It is interesting. At first I thought these fonts were hideous compared to the ones we know and love, but the examples gave me a little inspiration for them. Click the photos of the individuals, and they show examples on products or posters, and they look quite nice, original, and have character. They should really place these images on the homepage, instead of the written alphabet.
    • Raphmedia 12y ago
      Direct link to one such exemple. http://www.pinterest.com/pin/540994973960668020/ http://www.pinterest.com/pin/540994973960668020/ I think those fonts are really great. I could easily see them on a lot of products and posters. Handwritten fonts give a charm to a lot of products. Wines bottles comes to mind.
• moinnadeem 12y ago
  Although I'm curious to wonder where the profits go, they seem to be quite unclear about that: http://hyperallergic.com/135700/homeless-fonts-are-a-feel-good-fail/ http://hyperallergic.com/135700/homeless-fonts-are-a-feel-go...
  • ryanwhitney 12y ago
    From their about page: "The funds collected through Homelessfonts.org will be used to finance the work of the Arrels foundation for homeless people in Barcelona." http://www.arrelsfundacio.org http://www.arrelsfundacio.org And the director of the foundation responded in a comment on that article: "All people who are joining the project with their handwriting were homeless people and now fortunately they have accommodation and receive the support of Arrels Foundation to go forward in their lifes." http://hyperallergic.com/135700/homeless-fonts-are-a-feel-good-fail/#comment-1474044364 http://hyperallergic.com/135700/homeless-fonts-are-a-feel-go...
• ctdonath 12y ago
  Nice collection. FWIW, the terse title made me wonder if it was a collection of not-used-anywhere (as far as anyone knows) fonts, for times you're looking for a really unique font (say, lest there be an unfortunate association-by-typeface).
  • AnkhMorporkian 12y ago
    That would be a very interesting collection in its own right.
  • pbhjpbhj 12y ago
    I was thinking it was "orphaned" fonts that belonged to font houses that had closed and so were released to wander amongst the gutters and margins.
• joshuamerrill 12y ago
  "It's better than new. Now it has a story." -David Mamet Not only are these beautiful and useful fonts, but each one has a story that's as unique as the typography itself. I can't wait to use one of these in a project soon.
  • DaveWalk 12y ago
    Nicely said. It might just be my USA-centric views on poverty, but I find the idea of turning homelessness into a story with a contributed artistic element--typography--refreshing in a sense. Maybe it's just because all the people are smiling in their headshots :\ I realize the charity element to it might obfuscate the idea of it being "art," but I think it strikes an interesting balance between the two. Compare that to artists who document homelessness and use their art as a kind of charity, hoping to draw awareness to the issue: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2090360/Lee-Jeffries-haunting-photographs-homeless.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2090360/Lee-Jeffries...
• vachi 12y ago
  holly shit awesome project, a genuinely great idea
• sneak 12y ago
  Is anyone else disgusted by this?
  • esMazer 12y ago
    why?
  • Volscio 12y ago
    DERELICTE! It is a fashion, a way of life inspired by the very homeless, the vagrants, the crack whores that make this wonderful city so unique.
    • rocky1138 12y ago
      Somewhat related: the Brother Sharp craze a few years ago in China. http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/brother-sharp-%E7%8A%80%E5%88%A9%E5%93%A5 http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/brother-sharp-%E7%8A%80%E5%88%...
  • lilsunnybee 12y ago
    As long as all the profits are actually going to be used to help people, it doesn't count as exploitative i don't think. Though going to a foundation ... i don't know. A lot of charity money can go to paying salaries, and that doesn't always mean equal good is being done.
• pxndx 12y ago
  I speak Catalan and Spanish, if anyone is interested I can translate parts of http://www.arrelsfundacio.org/ http://www.arrelsfundacio.org/ to English. Google Translate gives "good enough" translations though. http://www.arrelsfundacio.org/que-fem/ http://www.arrelsfundacio.org/que-fem/ (this translates to rootsfoundation.org/about-us) > We help homeless people in Barcelona > We focus on two tasks: Covering the needs of homeless people and supporting them in their personal itinerary. > At Arrels we provide accommodation, food and health and social care to men and women living in poor conditions in the streets of Barcelona, and more importantly, "we are with them" accompanying them on the long road to regain autonomy.
• korzun 12y ago
  I don't know how I feel about this. In some way this feels cheap. Fonts? Buying fonts to help homeless people? Having homeless people create fonts that you can license out? Is this the best we can do? Seriously.
  • poopsintub 12y ago
    I'd rather have them try to get back on their feet with fonts than pestering me everytime I go into the grocery store. Do you have a few dollars? No, I don't carry cash. If I did, and gave it away, I wouldn't have any because every other person is coming up to me for a hand-out.
    • pkaye 12y ago
      This is not going to solve the pestering problem because there are far more homeless than the needs for fonts.
      • poopsintub 12y ago
        Well, nothing is going to solve the homeless problem entirely.
  • esMazer 12y ago
    Point taken. We as a society should be doing way more to help these people. But then again.. when was the last time you really tried to help someone on the street?
    • MrZongle2 12y ago
      I agree that more resources should be directed towards dealing with the causes of homelessness and helping those who need help. But in response to your question, consider this: About two years ago, my wife saw a woman in the parking lot of a large retail grocery/goods store holding a sign that said "anything helps". She had noticed this woman before on at least one occasion, and it occurred to my wife that perhaps this time she would do something to help somebody out. In addition to the things she needed, she purchased everything required for a large spaghetti dinner to include Parmesan cheese, a large loaf of fresh bread, and a box of cookies for dessert. She ensured everything was bagged up separately so all she had to do was hand it to the woman with the sign. After loading up our car, my wife drove over to the woman in the sign. She got out with the bag and as she walked towards the sign-holder, explained "hey, I just wanted to help out so I bought you everything for a dinner..." to which the woman replied, "food's not really our issue." My wife told me that she essentially closed her still-open mouth, did a 180 and got back into the car. We had spaghetti that night. I relate this not to imply that everybody with a sign implying need is a fraud, but to suggest that there may be a non-trivial number of people out there who do not act because they've had an experience similar to the one my wife had.
• SealClubb3r 12y ago
  Turn your handwriting into a font for free... http://www.myscriptfont.com/ http://www.myscriptfont.com/
• bitlord_219 12y ago
  I like anything that gets the homeless some help, but that zoom-on-mouseover on the photos is creepy.
  • nostromo 12y ago
    They've unwittingly recreated a trick used in negative political ads. Take a photo of your opponent, make it black and white, use a tight crop, and then slowly zoom.
• fozzieBoston 12y ago
  http://www.artlifting.com/ http://www.artlifting.com/ does something similar with art. Both companies seem incredible.
• pessimizer 12y ago
  I find this awful in the typical tone-deaf patronizing upper middle-class computer professional way - but I also really like Guillermo's handwriting and its curly flourishes.
• chanced 12y ago
  This was posted on reddit awhile ago but taken down and reposted several times. This bio really made me go "wtf?": > Loraine was born in London. She was an ordinary, hardworking family person, with nothing to worry about beyond paying the rent at the end of the month or keeping the fridge full. Until in 2009 she came to Barcelona on holiday. Soon after she arrived her passport was stolen from her and she had a series of problems with the British embassy. Somebody had made illegal use of her passport. So Loraine found herself in a strange place, unable to get home. She didn’t know anyone there and her circumstances meant she couldn’t ask for help from England, either. She had to sell all her possessions and, in time, learn to speak Spanish. “Living in the street is a wonderful adventure,” she says. In the street she discovered a new city, a new country and a new culture. “There are lots of people who prefer to sleep under the stars.” She also made lots of friends who helped her in a completely unfamiliar world. I'm not suggesting the company is involved but that story is incredibly suspect. They also seem to somewhat glamorize the "street life" in some of their bios.
  • UVB-76 12y ago
    I know this is absolutely not the case in large parts of the world, but in many developed countries it does takes some degree of desire to remain street homeless for any significant period of time. The support is often there for the taking, but some combination of mental health problems, drug dependency, etc. will see a person "choose" to live on the streets.
    • Mz 12y ago
      I am really uncomfortable with your statement. I am homeless. Well before I became homeless, I had a class on homelessness. Which is to say this is something I have both studied and also lived firsthand. Due to my medical condition, I am unwilling to remain in a homeless shelter. They simply aren't clean enough for my needs. I would take real help in a heartbeat if it were available. But the kind of "support" that is available to homeless individuals is often rather sucky, to say the least. So, yeah, you could say I "chose" to not go into a shelter and to thus remain on the street. That isn't completely inaccurate. But it sure makes my life sound a lot more empowered than I am experiencing it as being. Let me put it this way: Many people wind up on the street by leaving an abusive relationship. So you could say, hey, they chose to be on the street. They could have remained with the person providing a roof over their head. But it sort of conveniently sweeps their very real problems and challenges under the rug.
• apendleton 12y ago
  Without commenting too much on the narrative aspects of this (because to be honest it sort of feels a bit exploitative and icky), I think these typefaces could be improved quite a bit with the use of some more-powerful OpenType features, and particularly random contextual alternates, which let you supply multiple variants of a given glyph of which one is selected at random each time. It makes handwriting typefaces feel a lot more organic and natural, since as it is, anytime you have double letters the illusion is broken as it's plainly obvious that it's the exact same letter form on the page twice (see, for example, the double L in Guillermo's name). For an example, see http://www.graphics.com/news-old/p22-releases-c%C3%A9zanne-pro-font-opentype-format http://www.graphics.com/news-old/p22-releases-c%C3%A9zanne-p...
  • ygra 12y ago
    It's not random, usually, but dependent on the context (mostly so strokes don't overlap).
    • apendleton 12y ago
      The typeface I linked to does both, so there are regular contextual alternates and ligatures ("ll" gets ligated), but there's also randomization so that the same word written multiple times looks slightly different. This is a supported feature of OpenType.
• Mz 12y ago
  Oh, ugh. Why not "human fonts" or "people fonts"? (Or "natural fonts" or "handwriting fonts" or...) The problem I have with this is that if you help people based on the their status of being homeless, then do they stop qualifying once they are off the street? That kind of thing is what keeps poor people stuck. It's why the American welfare system is broken. You first have to qualify as "poor" and often some other thing to get assistance. Countries that just, say, provide national healthcare for all citizens, because you exist, help reduce the gap between rich and poor. Stuff like this helps widen it. We need to think about how to remove barriers so all people can live well and all that but you need to treat very carefully with programs which are framed such that you are basically rewarded for having a problem. That just tends to promote having that problem. (That's what the American welfare has done: It changed the social contract to reward being a poor, single mom such that it increased the incidence of poor, single moms in the population. Great job, that.)
  • iamdave 12y ago
    >Why not "human fonts" or "people fonts"? If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, then the lanes are striped with "person first" language (and all of its mutations).
    • deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    • Mz 12y ago
      I really don't know what you mean. This is an area I have studied, both formally and informally. How it is framed matters. The history of what went wrong with the American welfare system is deeply rooted in the fact that it was designed to "help poor, single moms" in an era when having a child out of wedlock was scandalous and just not done. It changed the social contract to frame it that way and made it far more acceptable to have children out of wedlock. That framing occurred at a time when most poor, single moms were widows -- ie "the deserving poor" -- not women who had given birth outside of wedlock. It was done in an unthinking manner and we are still living with the consequences decades later.
• thisjepisje 12y ago
  Too bad they use only one glyph per character. Cool project otherwise.