Toronto, Canada –
Mark Daye has created a socially intrusive project that has caused much of the public to stop and take notice of the world around them Specifically, the thousands of “invisible” people who call the streets their home. His weapon is typography and his medium is the forest of street signs that seem to melt into the texture of any major city. We were also forced to take a second look at ourselves and felt compelled to share this project with you.
“The goal was to affect an urban population on an intimate level using graphic design. Official Toronto city signs were deconstructed, then re-encoded with a subversive message that spoke about a less discussed and largely ignored urban population, the homeless. The intent was to catch people off-guard by making the invisible visible through a respected and authorized medium. Official signs carry with them an authoritative voice put in place to inform behaviour. The question was, what if the authoritative voice spoke of a humanitarian issue? On how many levels can these signs be read?”
– Mark Daye
Learn more here. The main site has all of the project’s notations, additional pictures and press related to it. A great idea that we hope changes perceptions.
This is really a powerful project. Let me know if anyone in the Anchorpoint community is working on any socially minded projects they could use some help on (i.e. vectors, legwork, whatever).
What a clever idea. It seems like something that any city could easily adopt. I wonder how you could ever possibly gauge it’s effectiveness.
I still love it.
But… homelessness has everything to do with not havin a home. Or a house. Or an apartment. Tell you what, not ownin or rentin a piece of real estate weren’t such a big deal couple hundred years ago. Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone slept outside for months at a time, and didn’t nobody think poorly on em.