All Nigerians have a hate-love relationship with Danfo buses. On one hand, they get you to where you need to be and you are most likely to meet the most hilarious characters. On the other hand, you can be going somewhere early in the morning in your finest shirt now and Danfo will just help you tear it, or one conductor will conveniently forget to give you your 900 naira change.
Hate them or love them, Danfos are a cultural phenomenon in Lagos. If you close your eyes and try to conjure a picture of Lagos it’ll be impossible to imagine Lagos without the vibrant black and yellow of Danfo buses.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about Danfos is how much of a unique and artistic expression it is of its owner’s tastes.
You are most likely to find catchphrases, stickers or illustrations which express the owner’s preferences and beliefs. You are bound to see phrases like ‘God is in control’ or ‘Wabillahi Taofeek’ if the owner is religious. If the owner has a sense of humor then you are bound to see a punchline or two.
You can even tell what their taste in music is, by which artists they chose to advertise with stickers on their windows. We can bet you’d never see a sticker of Osupa and Pasuma on the same bus.
The only thing we might love more than the catchphrases and illustrations themselves would be the unique and creative designs in which they are usually created. Designer studio, Dá Design Studio, inspired by this decided to create a font design, aptly named Danfo STD and we couldn’t love it more.
Left to us we’d print everything in this. Imagine a t-shirt with the catchphrase ‘I can’t come and die’ written in this font?
What we are most excited about, however, is the fact that they are people out there who not only recognize the cultural importance of Danfos to Lagos *side eye to Ambo* but also decided to create something awesome out of it.
