Why Hobo is the perfect typeface for Robert… | Little White Lies

Why Hobo is the per­fect type­face for Robert Redford’s swansong

05 Dec 2018

Words by Jake Cunningham

Text overlay displays "ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI" in large yellow letters. Date and time displayed below: "September 26, 1981 7:55 am". Image shows the back of a person's head against a cloudy sky.
Text overlay displays "ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI" in large yellow letters. Date and time displayed below: "September 26, 1981 7:55 am". Image shows the back of a person's head against a cloudy sky.
Title design­er Ted­dy Blanks on how The Old Man & the Gun’s font of choice reflects the actor’s legacy.

A title card doesn’t just tell you the name of the film you’re about to watch. Those let­ters, in whichev­er shape and order they appear, are telling you who this film is; its style, its voice, its iden­ti­ty. From the shaky, unnerv­ing­ly child­like etch­ings of Dr Strangelove (designed by Pablo Fer­ro, who sad­ly passed away this year) to the screech­ing, scar­let punch card of The Cab­in in the Woods, a film’s titles aren’t just a print­ed name on a birth cer­tifi­cate, they’re a sig­na­ture – a sig­nal of artis­tic intent.

It’s a lot of pres­sure for just a few let­ter­forms, and in the case of David Lowery’s The Old Man & the Gun those let­ters don’t just hold the weight of the film’s iden­ti­ty, but also that of its star, Robert Red­ford. Ear­li­er this year Red­ford announced that the film, based on the lat­er life crimes of sep­tu­a­ge­nar­i­an gen­tle­man bank rob­ber For­rest Tuck­er, would be his last (although he has since made less con­crete com­ments). In an ele­gant and sim­ple way, the titles man­age not only to hon­our this but­ter­mint film, but its star as well.

In Lowery’s film, Redford’s role remains that of the dev­il­ish charmer (all the bank man­agers he robs com­ment on his polite­ness) that helped him make his name in the likes of Butch Cas­sidy and the Sun­dance Kid, The Sting and the unfair­ly for­got­ten, Quin­cy Jones scored, four-heists-in-one romp The Hot Rock. Red­ford seems to be hap­pi­ly book­end­ing him­self, despite here being part of the Over the Hill Gang’, he’s accept­ing that for some audi­ences he’ll always be the young buck on the run. This is evi­dent in the film’s font of choice: Hobo.

Text in bold yellow against a dark blue background, stating "THE OLD MAN & THE GUN".

Select­ed for the film by title design­er Ted­dy Blanks (whose cred­its include Lady Bird, Love & Friend­ship and Lis­ten Up Philip), Hobo was cre­at­ed by Mor­ris Fuller Ben­ton and released in 1910. The ori­gin of its name – very much in the ram­bling spir­it of For­rest Tuck­er – is unknown, but the sto­ry goes that the type had been hang­ing around foundries since the turn of the cen­tu­ry and just became that old hobo’. Blanks says that for The Old Man & the Gun, Low­ery want­ed, the titles to resem­ble the no-non­sense titles from the 1970s movies that were the inspi­ra­tion for the over­all style of the movie.” Despite its birth many decades pri­or, Hobo became the per­fect fit for this 70s look.

Since being plucked out of the reeds by the Amer­i­can Type Founders, Hobo has been digi­tised, reborn by type design­er James Edmond­son, and won­der­ful­ly renamed as Hobeaux. It’s this vari­ant we find in the film. It makes you think of paint­ed signs in the old west,” says Blanks, and cov­ers for clas­sic rock albums.” (See The Byrds Goin’ Back’ for one of many vinyl sleeve uses from the 60s.) Blanks wasn’t even aware of Redford’s retire­ment plans when first tasked with titling the film, he just knew, his char­ac­ter was kind of myth­ic and had some kind of rela­tion­ship to his movie star­dom, and that there was some­thing spe­cial about him play­ing this role, now, as an old­er man.”

Rear view of person with dark hair in front of "Bellmead, Texas" text overlay, dated 26 July 1981 at 10:02 am.

There is some­thing relaxed and com­fort­ing about Hobo’s lack of straight lines and descend­ing limbs – there’s noth­ing below the belt here, what you see is what you get – but it’s not just Hobo’s free­wheel­ing spir­it that makes it a per­fect fit for Red­ford. In fact, they’ve been trav­el­ling togeth­er for a while. When I was doing research, I realised there were two movies in the ear­ly years of his career that had titles with sim­i­lar con­struc­tions to this one: in 1969, Butch Cas­sidy and the Sun­dance Kid; in 1970, Lit­tle Fauss and Big Hal­sy.” Both Butch and Lit­tle Fauss oper­at­ed in an era of peak rogue-ish Red­ford, and now, half a cen­tu­ry lat­er, he can’t resist one last job. There’s no bet­ter type to sign on with.

Much like the type­set, the ety­mo­log­i­cal ori­gin of the word hobo’ is also a curio, its true birth­place unestab­lished. In the 1937 edi­tion of The Amer­i­can Lan­guage’, HL Menck­en described a hobo as some­one who, may take some longish hol­i­days, but soon­er or lat­er he returns to work,” which is prob­a­bly how For­rest Tuck­er might charm­ing­ly describe his CV, even if the hol­i­days are prison sen­tences and the work is rob­bing banks.

The hobo ras­cal Red­ford has drift­ed across our screens for a long time and Fuller Benton’s font gives The Old Man & the Gun the insignia of his lega­cy, some­thing Ted­dy Blanks knew as soon as he found it. I called David and told him if we didn’t use Hobo as the main type­face in The Old Man & the Gun, we would be doing a dis­ser­vice to film his­to­ry. He agreed.”

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