THE SALVATION ARMY
A public service announcement reimagined as an obituary.
PRELUDE: THE COLD
It wasn’t the storm that killed him. It was bureaucracy — the quiet kind that signs papers and calls it compassion. He asked for a bed. The system offered paperwork. By dawn, he was a headline — another statistic frozen mid-sentence.
ACT I: THE BODY
We used no actors, no glamour, no mercy. Every face in the series was treated like evidence — lit like confession, framed like truth. The portraits were designed to haunt, not inspire. Red for rejection. White for surrender. Black for the silence between them.
ACT II: THE SIN
The real sin wasn’t homelessness. It was indifference. This campaign wasn’t created to comfort donors; it was meant to accuse them. Typography became a verdict. Each poster, a tombstone carved in Sans. There was no call to action — only a moral autopsy.
ACT III: THE REDEMPTION
By the time the posters went up, the temperature had already dropped below mercy. But people noticed. Donations spiked. Shelters reopened. For a brief moment, empathy thawed. And maybe that’s all design can do — not resurrect the dead, but make the living feel responsible for them.
Credits: Concept, art direction, copy, and photography by Arash Giani.
Catalogue No. 003 / SIGNA ARCHIVE / THE SALVATION ARMY SERIES / 2025