Hobo 2010

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About Hobo 2010

In honor of the 100th anniversary of Morris Fuller Benton's typeface 'Hobo,' we're collecting photographs of the typeface in use. Hobo is the face of the American vernacular. Used to elicit whimsy, Hobo is fun. But what do we really know... let's see the images and then decide. This group was started by The Design Office: a Providence design collective.

Submit photographs of Hobo in use. Since we know what the typeface looks like, submit it within its context. What is near it? How do we 'read' the face. Pictures of it in printed publications are ok, but scans are not. No screen grabs of Web sites, please!

A note on its history: Mac McGrew writes in his reference book American Metal Typefaces of the Twentieth Century, that Hobo "was drawn in the early 1900s and sent to the foundry without a name... but that further work on it was continually pushed aside, until it became known as 'that old hobo' because it hung around so long without results."

Now go find some Hobo!

http://thedesignoffice.org/hobo