Bold designs Gadens Stemmer's identity to bridge the gap between street life and the passing public
Bold has redesigned the identity of Gadens Stemmer, a social enterprise that runs guided city walks led by people with lived experience of homelessness, addiction, and sex work. The organisation does not ask for donations, it sells tickets, a commercial model that changes what the brand needs to do. Rather than speaking to sympathisers, the identity has to create a first point of contact between people who would not normally share a conversation.
A simple system to bridge two worlds
The brief required the identity to work across two audiences who rarely share visual space: the ticket-buying public and the guides, people with backgrounds in homelessness, addiction, or sex work. Bold Scandinavia's response was to strip the design language down to a minimal set of components: a limited colour palette, a mix of what design director Mads Bjerre calls "the raw and the classical," and a logo built from stacked, angular letterforms that reference punk graphics and brutalist typography.
"These are people that we 'normal' people often try to make invisible, we ignore them, pretend there's something more important to look at," says Mads Bjerre, Design Director at Bold Scandinavia. "The design had to embrace them. Strengthen them, give them an honest platform. No wrapping, no decoration."
The contrast sits between the logo and the photography. The logotype is dense and confrontational. The photography by Lasse Bak Mejlvang is direct and human, showing the guides as people rather than case studies.
"The design sits in a very simple formal language, few colours, a blend of the raw and the classical. That way, the design can begin to build a bridge between two worlds, break down the hardness from both sides," Bjerre says.
