During a career that spanned five decades, including spells at Ogilvy & Mather and J. Walter Thompson, Hobbs introduced the Guinness corporate identity that is still largely in use today.
He also helped evolve one of the best-remembered but least-successful campaigns of all time, the 1957 ad featuring a trenchcoat-clad lone man smoking a Strand cigarette.
Hobbs, who was 74 when he retired from JWT in 1990, began his working life as an apprentice printer and had the distinction of having a typeface, Unified Hobbsian, named after him. He was renowned for his love of typography and illustration, as well as his skill as a cartoonist.
Hobbs began his agency career in 1944 at SH Benson, working on briefs including BP and Rank Films. In 1964, David Ogilvy invited Hobbs to join him in New York.
He returned to SH Benson UK two years later before beginning a 16-year association with JWT.
He is survived by his wife Nicola and a son and daughter from a previous marriage.