The Arrels Foundation is devoted to assisting the homeless. With the crisis over the last few years, there has been a drastic reduction in its budget and an increase in its workload.

The problem of the homeless seems to become harder to see in the glare of more urgent, high-profile issues covered by the mass media (natural disasters, starvation, etc.). It is also true that the meagre aid received by the homeless is not generally channelled by organisations, but consists of small-scale support given on an individual basis, which does not really help solve the problem.

In addressing this situation, we discovered a new way of obtaining help without begging for it:

Commercial brands use typefaces or fonts in their advertising and packaging, and they pay for the privilege.

The idea was to take the handwriting the homeless use to write their cardboard signs for begging in the street and to turn it into different fonts that could be sold online, for brands to use in their communications.

This way, instead of providing them with aid sporadically, we created a self-sustaining, long-term project, to help the Arrels Foundation to raise funds and to help make over the life of each author of a font. A new category of Corporate Social Responsibility and, at the same time, a new way for brands to help.

Quite apart from the funds raised, we helped many people regain their self-esteem and their lives.

The Goal

Our goal was to find a way of helping the Arrels Foundation to boost its resources. To find an alternative to the traditional way, since Spanish society has little to spare at the moment.

The Strategy

In a world saturated with NGO campaigns asking for help and support, our strategy was to offer something in this case, instead of asking for it:

We created a new brand of typefaces, made from the handwriting the homeless use to beg for help in the street with their cardboard signs. Homelessfonts. These fonts were put on sale on the Foundation’s website and on other font download sites. And we created an advertising campaign for the new brand, to raise awareness amongst designers, as well as advertising and marketing people.

We produced a brand seal so that the companies that used our fonts could convey the fact at the same time, providing space for a new category of Corporate Social Responsibility.