Shelter is a social housing charity in the UK. Founded as a grassroots movement in 1966, it faces the same issues today - a housing crisis at breaking point.

We needed to communicate a powerful sense of cause and rallying cry through a brand idea and embed that idea across all communications.

A safe home is a fundamental right for everyone and 17,000,000 people in the UK do not have one. Shelter supports those who need it the most. It helps people understand their rights, confronts landlords and petitions the government.

We took Shelter back to its roots and re-positioned it as an activist organisation. Inspired by protest, we created an aggressive brush stroke visual language - designed to positively disrupt and standout in a polite sector.

When asked what words people associate with Shelter's communications, only 34% said “meaningful” and only 21% said “motivating”. To change this, we made the brand less polite. We made it bolder and braver.

We also needed to empower younger audiences; making them part of the solution and enabling the brand to become part of their identity. We did this by creating a simple toolkit and symbol that’s easy to recreate by anyone anywhere, ready to take to the streets.

Shelter has always been fearless in the fight for safe homes, but over the years the brand had lost its voice. With fundraising events and 100+ high street shops (UK), it had become another polite charity. Shelter needed an identity that lets the UK know it’s standing up to the housing crisis by saying “ENOUGH IS ENOUGH”.

Shelter has started a movement and needed a distinctive symbol to represent their fight. We created a new logo; a red arrow combining the iconic shape of a roof with a positive upwards arrow.

A font was also designed and developed from detailed brush strokes to capture the real movement and urgency in each letter. It gives Shelter a voice to redact and amend words - to turn negatives into positives. Further unique shapes and graphic devices were created to disrupt the status quo and highlight issues. The brush stroke represents Shelter’s provocativeness, proactiveness or protectiveness.

It’s a simple toolkit existing in the hands of the people who use it the most and empowering supporters to become activists.

A hard-hitting brand campaign introduced the new identity nationwide. Standing out from charity tropes and instilling the new attitude; the campaign confronted the government directly and used the new identity to create

The launch week on social media in May 2021 brought an 82% increase in inbound messages, and a 47% increase in people talking to Shelter. Overall campaign statistics by YouGov’s always on Charity Index and bespoke tracking indicated that unprompted awareness of Shelter for adults in Great Britain reached 53% in July 2021, the highest in 2 years remaining consistent through to January 2022.

Policy-change takes years of intense lobbying & campaigning by Shelter & their supporters, and as such they have not yet been directly impacted as a result of the rebrand. However, the housing crisis topic is increasingly gaining traction with the belief in the cause increasing, and awareness of Shelter as an advocate for the 17 million people who do not have a safe home also continuing to rise.