Invisible York Posters, by Good Organisation, 2019

Innovation is defined as the action or process of innovating either a new method, idea, and product or carrying out new combinations. It is used in almost everything and by everyone but one group that stood out to me due their innovating posters is Good Organisation in York. It is an award-winning Community Interest Company whose aim is to ‘effect positive change with speed and passion, by offering training opportunities and providing personal development support to individuals affected by homelessness’. With my pathways being in Graphic and Interaction design, I have focused on the posters created by the group to challenge the perceptions of homelessness, which show innovation with the layout of the hard-hitting statements. As part of the ‘Invisible York’ project, the innovating posters display a new, striking way of highlighting the ever-growing issue of homelessness, which is regularly ignored by the public. The groups’ specific chose of colour for some of the words is very successful in highlighting quickly to the public the message behind the posters, ‘bad bed’ and ‘homeless people’. The positioning of the protest posters is also expertly placed and sized so that the reader can imagine themselves having to sit or sleep in that position. The design of the posters tries to provoke a reaction for change as homelessness posters can often be dehumanised on large billboards, but again, these place the reader directly into the reality that homeless people face daily. Though innovation and provocation appear to be opposites by definition, in this case they work together by using a new way of provoking a response for change, which is needed desperately to try and curve the homelessness crisis.