A friend of mine, who shall remain nameless (but whose name rhymes with Lay Shewis), recently asked for my opinion on a logo he was working on. I have to admit that my immediate reaction had nothing to do with what you’d normally look for in a logo—simplicity, impact, memorability, composition—but the choice of the typeface the designer selected. If I remember correctly, my response was something like:
“Is that Hobo? No Hobo!!! PS: The Yankees are stupid. And so are sweater vests.”
This “Lay Shewis” character didn’t really deserve such a curt response and he certainly didn’t deserve all those exclamation points. I liked much of what he had done with the logo, yet my response was based on a visceral reaction to a typeface I’ve seen perhaps one too many times.
This got me to thinking, What do I have against the typeface Hobo? It’s not poorly designed like Comic Sans, overused to the point of irrelevance like Papyrus, or inherently hateful like Curlz MT (we haven’t written about Curlz MT yet, but it’s coming). So why does Hobo so frequently show up on lists of the typefaces designers hate most? Usually when designers take a disliking to a typeface, it’s not necessarily that it’s a bad typeface, it’s just that it’s been misused and/or overused.
Hobo is like your kindly grandfather: playful, unassuming, and 100 years old. It was designed in 1910 by Morris Fuller Benton, the chief type designer for the American Type Founders from 1900 to 1937, to be used for display purposes in informal situations. It’s been described as a “humorous novelty,” which makes me think of it as the fake dog poo of typography. Here’s a description from the website Typedia, a website you didn’t know about because you’re not a huge nerd:
The Hobo font is a dynamically tapering face in which all strokes are accentuated curves, achieving a superb decorative effect. Hobo almost suggests a freely drawn alphabet with its unusual robust roundness. The Hobo font was designed to be used at large sizes. It has no descenders: the lower case g, p, q and y are incorporated into the x-height. The Hobo font imparts a friendly personality to display work such as invitations, menus, signage, and packaging.
Let me repeat part of that back to you: It has no descenders! (I know, again with the exclamation points.) All of the letters g and y and p and j and what have you end abruptly on the baseline. I mean, has the whole world gone crazy? Also, the entire character set is made up of curved lines. Look at it and you’ll see there’s not a straight line to be found.
There’s at least one website dedicated to the dislike of Hobo, but it doesn’t have anywhere near the same energy or force as those opposed to truly bad typefaces like Comic Sans. There’s a website called Hobo Sightings, a Flickr page, and a firm called The Design Office in Rhode Island dedicated to documenting instances of Hobo in its natural habitat, which appears to be on church playgrounds, restaurant signs, and whimsical T-shirts or bumper stickers.
I guess, in retrospect, I don’t really dislike Hobo. My reaction to seeing it in Shea’s “Lay’s” logo design was based mostly on the fact that it is fairly prevalent in the visual environment, usually found in lower-end fare. But it does what it set out to do and it obviously has stood the test of time.
And I think that’s the crux of it. I don’t mind seeing Hobo on fliers for neighborhood cookouts or canvas banners announcing 2-for-1 egg rolls at the local Hung Far Lo Chinese eatery, but I can’t see it being used well in a piece of sophisticated, high-end design.
Another slow Monday, huh?
Are you saying that I’m not sophisticated since I used Hobo or because I eat egg rolls while wearing sweater vests? There is an important distinction to be made there. (For the record Hobo was changed in the logo to an unnamed typeface to avoid future chastising from O’Tupac.)
The real problem you have with Hobo is the name itself and the label attached to it. Unlike you, I have no bias against those who choose to carry all of their worldly possessions wrapped in a bandanna and tied to a stick over their right shoulder. If the typeface was called Vagrant MT or Slab Vagrant you would have loved it. It is your problem not mine.
I’m going to get back to my lunch of a very unsophisticated cup of mulligan.
Me first gut reaction was “Isn’t that Trader Joe’s font?” but looking at the TJ website they do vary a little, but the overall feel is the same, so my positive feelings toward Trader Joe’s are leaking onto my perception of this font!
A century old? Really? That kind of blows me away. To me, Hobo is one of a handful of typefaces that so thoroughly evoke the 1970s that I can practically smell Bicentennial fireworks and Reggie Bars. And while the 70s are by far the awesomest decade ever, 70s styles should not be removed from their native habitat. So for me, Hobo works for retro-kitsch New York Cosmos posters or Carter for President t-shirts, and just about nowhere else.
First, let me say that the Yankees are not stupid. We just need to officially change their name to the “No Good Stinkin’ Yankees.” And I also have to say sweater vests are not stupid. They are just sort of geeky, so I will leave Lay Shewis to wear them.
I do however like egg rolls and wish we had a Won Hung Lo eatery in our little town. Maybe Paul can take me to one sometime.
Trader Joe’s can use what ever font they want, and I will still love TJ’s.
As for all this whoopla about font usage … maybe we just go back to using IBM Selectric typewritters with those little font balls you put in to the machine. I think you had a choice of the “Large Fonts” (10 pitch) and the “Small Fonts” (12 pitch). While there was maybe a dozen or so fonts, you also had to do things like use a lower case “L” for the number “1″.
At least now we have choices and with the hundreds of options, we leave open the possibilty of thousands of ways to piss off Lay Shewis and Caul Paputo with our font usage.
I just found your blog (from a twitter post by one of the NAI subregions) and just sunk an afternoon into reading a good chunk of your archives. Great stuff!
Jeff, don’t forget, you can always use banned fonts typed on a curve too. That gets them every time. I spoke with Lay Shewis about it just today. (Although if you download the NAI Awards nomination form you can see where Paul did it: http://www.interpnet.com/download/NAI_awards_10.pdf).
Lyman: Are there any other kind of Mondays?
Bonnie: We are glad you just sunk an afternoon on IBD. We have sunk several afternoons ourselves at the annoyance of loved ones.
Sema: Round is good.
Jeff: What I really need is a New York Yankees sweater vest, now that would be awesome!
Angela: Trader Joe’s granola bars are the best.
Lay: You should have manned up and stuck with Hobo, sissy.
Scott: Reggie looked best in pinstripes.
The MOKANA logo is a hobo font with a 150% horizontal. I especially liked the way the “O” looked when strecthed. I was looking for something to represent the sound hole in an acoustic guitar. The hobo font at 150% gave me that look. In lit and on the web site is is beveled.
I found your website after looking at 1000s of fonts for the design of THE MOKANA ROKSTERZ logo. The story line is similiar to the 70′s partridge family and the ROKSTERZ is a doll and action figure line.
After looking at these 1000s fonts, I found myself drawn back to hobo at 150%. Call me crazy but I love that there are no straight lines and the feeling it ellicits from it’s viewers. It is clean and crisp. It is not all cobbly and stylish which makes it hard to read. It is easy to interpret and every one who beta looked at it high high regards for the beveled “O”.
Mahalo nui loa!
MOKANA @
THE MOKANA CORPORATION
aka THE MOKANA ROKSTERZ