Student billboards expose the harsh realities of life for Bradford’s Homeless
During February 2011 another milestone was reached in the Hidden Voices campaign with the erection of two more billboards, this time featuring work exclusively produced by two of our students. The School of Arts & Media at Bradford College has been a key contributor to the campaign, managed by Artworks Creative Communities.
In addition to supporting learners on the project, a group of students on our BA (Hons) Graphic Design, Illustration & Digital Media have deployed their extensive skills to produce their own designs to publicise the campaign issues. The billboard displays were designed to change perceptions about and inspire compassion for the homeless, and the latest two to be revealed highlight the social and physical impact of homelessness.
Poeyan Chan’s design is featured on a billboard in the Manningham Lane area. Her striking eye design was based on the emotions evoked by homelessness; the feelings of loneliness and rejection felt by the homeless person and the apathy or indifference of those who walked past them.
Poeyan explained, “Making eye contact is the way you communicate feelings and understanding. They say you see the soul through the eyes. I photographed fellow student Matt’s eye and then had him pose as someone sleeping rough and showed this image in the pupil. There are contradictions as the eye is colourful and attractive but the homeless person’s situation is ugly and something people turn away from. It is about the way the homeless person looks out and also wanting people to look at the billboard and see what is happening to this person.”
Lucy Wileman’s powerful design is posted on a billboard in the Queens Road area. Her photograph and text challenges observers heading to a comfortable home to think about the grim conditions some of their fellow citizens endure.
Lucy recalled, “As part of our research for my design I wandered around rundown parts of Bradford with students Matt and Poeyan. I tried to imagine where I would go if I was living on the streets. We looked at various alleyways which would provide shelter and then I found a plastic fork discarded by a bin and I realised someone had been eating and sleeping rough there. I wanted people to recognise this and also question why this is happening, so I used the text, ‘I’m home. Are You?’ I am very happy with the finished result and that where it has been positioned, debris on the ground echoes that in the photograph.”
Both girls were stunned by to see the sheer scale of their work in situ and delighted that it was so visible to the public. In producing this work they had overcome specific design challenges related to creating billboard designs rather than conventional posters. Lucy revealed, “Every billboard has to allow a certain amount of handling space at the bottom so you have to position things in another way; you have to work to different dimensions, plus font and logo sizes all need to be a lot bigger than on screen.”
Their Course Tutor, Paul Holmes, commented, “The students have gained a lot from this stage of the project. This was not only another live job, but a very substantial one which will help them in their careers as designers. All the students involved have done very well and the outcomes have been excellent by any agency standards.”
More work by students and learners on the project will be revealed later, along with the book which currently in production.
You can take a closer look at Poeyan and Lucy’s designs here
The project was supported by The Media Trust and featured in a TV documentary.