Hobo Pigeon Studio® is a branding and creative studio based in Vancouver, Washington.
WAYFINDERS AT HEART
We help target audiences navigate a world full of wonder—and information—by providing thoughtful and engaging brand-driven visual solutions. Rooted in clean design and a curious approach, our capabilities include brand identity and guidelines, editorial design, presentation design, white papers, infographics and data visualization, multimedia, site refreshes, print, and more.
FIELD EXPERTISE
Hobo Pigeon helps brands and institutions maintain and evolve their presence, perception, and impact. While we enjoy building brands from the ground up, Hobo Pigeon specializes in providing brand continuity and excellence across multiple channels and campaigns. Whether you have established brand guidelines or are taking more incremental steps, we’ve got you covered.
Our Work
Hobo Pigeon offers high-end design, creative direction, and strategic branding for local businesses, cultural institutions, tech innovators, restaurants and brewers, big dreamers, and more.
Our approach values clear communication & meaningful collaboration. We’ve partnered with industry pioneers like Almanac Beer Company, local restaurant Union Standard, entrepreneurs from Dragonfly Castle to WorkshopSF, and global brands including Chrysler, Nestlé, and Google. Now accepting new client partnerships.
About
Founded in 2012, Hobo Pigeon Studio is the design studio of Bryan Keever, a native of Pittsburgh PA. Having called the Northern California, Mid-Atlantic, and Pacific Northwest regions home, Hobo Pigeon serves a small client base across the continental United States.
The idea of an independent creative studio dedicated to the wonderfully pedestrian notion of making the world easier to understand took shape on the Golden Gate Bridge’s east sidewalk. There among the clanks and clunks of traffic crossing metal girders, the lyrical languages of tourists, and the foghorn bellows from freighters below: The memory of a children’s book featuring a rail-riding hero mixed in with the earnest daily bustle of urban pigeons at work.
A graduate of Ohio University’s School of Art program, Bryan’s BFA in Graphic Design began with an interest in toothpaste packaging and culminated in a full-scale fabricated highway sign and detailed guidelines manual exploring a safe, efficient, and effective system to help drivers traveling around U.S. cities. He works and lives in Vancouver, Washington, where a new adventure—or a grand view—is always near.
Ethos
HOBO
A hobo, traditionally, is a dedicated and skilled worker. One possible source of the term comes from the phrase “hoe-boy,” signifying one who helps on the farm. Hobos did more than pick crops, clear fields, and log forests: They helped build towns and sustain economies. Notably, they shared and leveraged the skills and abilities from their travels with others down the line.
PIGEON
The rock pigeon (columba livia) is found across the entire continental United States. While drawn in native habitats to inland or coastal mountains, pigeons in their adapted environments gather in places inhabited by humans—notably, farms or towns. True to its monicker, the city pigeon is a ubiquitous, energetic, and highly-adaptable presence in our urban landscapes.
ETHOS
Hobos and pigeons are kindred spirits. Both excel at navigating, whether through railway networks or an innate system tied to Earth’s magnetic fields. They also thrive by working together: Adapting to ever-shifting environments, hobos developed and shared a catalog of coded visual communication—widely-understood markings on signs and buildings designed to help others passing through. Pigeons similarly collaborate, and flocks may exhibit a system of coordinated turns and re-directions in their daily flight patterns. Culturally, hobos and pigeons are an indelible part of the ever-changing zeitgeist—time, place, and shared experience.
Sources: Wyman, Mark. Hoboes: Bindlestiffs, Fruit Tramps, and the Harvesting of the West. New York: Hill and Wang, 2010 | Blechman, Andrew D. Pigeons: The Fascinating Saga of the World’s Most Revered and Reviled Bird. New York: Grove Press, 2006 | Audubon.org: Various contributors, “Guide to North American Birds: Rock Pigeon” | Wikipedia contributors: “Columbidae, Freighthopping, Hobo”
