ABOUT

Shelter is built on the belief that everyone has the right to a safe home. Founded in 1966 as a grassroots organisation to support the homeless on British streets, it has grown to provide advice, legal and practical support to everyone who needs it the most, while fighting for better investment in housing and for laws and policies to defend everyone’s right to a safe home.

In 2020, Shelter uncovered new research to give society a greater understanding of the scale, nature, and impact of the housing crisis in the UK. It showed that 1 in 3 in Britain (34%) - some 17.5m people – live without a safe and secure home, impacted by the housing system that is unaffordable, unfit, unstable, and discriminatory. As a result, the situation is a national emergency.

To show the unfiltered truth behind the crisis, Shelter needed a new voice to make society and the UK government take notice, to stand up to the system by saying ‘enough is enough’. To create a national movement that will transform the housing system and the country. To fight and to win the fight for everyone’s right to a safe home.

Working with the Shelter team we created a strategy that transformed it from a charity to a movement. Inspired by the spirit of activism on which Shelter was founded, we created a new brand, designed to disrupt, and which represents the fearless and unstoppable determination of Shelter to fight for everyone’s right to a safe home. It’s designed to give Shelter the power to build a movement, to stand alongside those who need help, a call to action that no government and politicians can ignore.

Using the visual language of protest, the identity is a symbol of a red arrow, in a font created from a red brush stroke. It combines the iconic shape of a roof with a positive upwards arrow: an urgent symbol that invites everyone to join in and demand change. It’s easy to draw, to make it your own, a tool for campaigners to raise their voice, to intervene, to right the wrongs, to take a stance. It captures the urgent realism of a human hand, powerful and determined, a language of protest, to challenge and to win.

The simple act of holding hands in a shape of an arrow has become a symbol of the campaign – replicating the shape of a logo, a symbol of a safe home for millions of people who join the fight.