thehouse design new Julian House identity
January 2010: After working with homeless charity, Julian House now for the last couple of years we were asked redesign their visual identity and redefine their brand values.
The problem was that no one really knew what Julian House did. They assumed that all they did was run a night shelter, which couldn’t be further from the truth. Julian House is actually all about opportunity. Opportunity for clients to reconnect with their local community. To be creative. To have a home. To regain self esteem.
We wanted to get across the idea of opportunity within the logo, which we were able to do in a couple of ways. We added a strapline and also the house/arrow icon. This icon suggests opportunity, progress, positivity and in a neat double meaning, putting a roof over the heads of the homeless.
We also wanted to modernise the whole identity so it looked more like the forward thinking, progressive organisation it is. We did this with the use of a modern typeface and minimal colour palette.
Last week the new identity was officially revealed to the public of Bath in local newspaper, The Bath Chronicle. We were invited to talk about how we came about creating the new identity and the story behind it.
More recently we were asked to design the Julian House Christmas appeal for donations, which would be going out to thousands of local homes and businesses.
The theme this year was that ‘homelessness can happen to anyone’. Many of the homeless men and women in Bath before they were homeless were in careers such as The Armed Forces, Catering and Gardening. They have skills but using them is a massive challenge. Julian House would help the men and women to rebuild their lives and start using those skills again.
We took that positioning and came up with the idea that ‘homeless men and women come from all walks of life’. A great metaphor to communicate this was a simple row of shoes that represent the different types of people that end up on the streets.
