This Art Director Beautifully Redesigns Homeless People’s Signs

America’s homeless face myriad challenges, from mental illness to problems with addiction and substance abuse to amateur typography. The last of those is something that a Chicago art director is trying to address through a project called The Urban Type Experiment.

h/t: adweek, designtaxi

“As an art director it’s my job to grab people’s attention with great design every day. So I set out to see if great design could have an impact on people in the most ignored platform,” the site says.

Basically, the art director makes the acquaintance of a new homeless person every week, re-letters his or her signage, then checks back to see if the efforts helped at all. The site is pretty honest about how helpful the work has or hasn’t been, which makes it seem less like a roundabout self-promotion tactic and more like genuine outreach.