Front cover

Buried Treasure!: Tales from Bikini Bottom is a compilation book published by Simon Spotlight in 2004. It contains six SpongeBob SquarePants stories: The Amazing SpongeBobini, Hands Off!, SpongeBob's Secret Valentine, And the Winner Is..., SpongeBob and the Princess, and Bottoms Up! Jokes from Bikini Bottom.

The front cover uses Tabitha plus Lionel Text. The back uses Rat Fink Roman for the synopsis, plus a version of Eraser Dust above a crudely drawn treasure chest. For the copyright information, Utopia can be seen.

Cover illustration by Zina Saunders.

Back cover

L’art queer de ne pas réussir à traduire “L’art queer de ne pas réussir” is a collection of annexes to the text The Queer Art of Failure written by Jack Halberstam. Halberstam views failure as empowering events that can serve as critiques of capitalist and heteropatriarchal norms.

As the title suggests, I failed to translate this text. However, from this book, which seemed so desirable and yet almost unattainable, I tried to grasp what I could in order to redistribute it into the six objects contained in this folder (including, among other things, a discussion with Léo Love Gentil about the collective dansmalangue, a translation of Chapter 1 of TQAOF, and a SpongeBob Survival Kit). This project experiments with the content of the book itself, putting it to the test in order to imagine it beyond the mystery it holds.

TQAOF was written in 2011, and Jack Halberstam uses a concept he calls “Low Theory”, with which he seeks to analyze popular culture objects to reach a broader audience. The project is almost exclusively composed in Fluxisch Else (distributed by Open Source Publishing) and Adelphe by Eugénie Bidaut (available on the Typothèque Genderfluid by Bye Bye Binary). The two are supported by cameo appearances by a handful of other typefaces.

The project pdf is available via are.na.

The front side of the book

Comic Crazy... Take 2! is a follow-up of the first Comic Crazy book, consisting of SpongeBob SquarePants comics originating from Nick Magazine.

“Comic Crazy...” is set in Surfer Shop, with Tim Sale Lower being used for much of the other text, with the publisher’s URL in Gotham.

The back side of the book

Much of this unofficial collector magazine's front cover is typographically populated by two of House Industries’ Typography of Coop fonts, namely Typography of Coop Flaired and Typography of Coop Latin. In a few minor areas, “Beckett Plushie Pals presents” is set in Eurostile Heavy Condensed, “SpongeBob SquarePants” uses Mr. Bubble by GautFonts, and “Unofficial Collector” Mark Riddle’s Gilligan’s Island. In the bar code area, the website address is set in Helvetica, with information below it in Helvetica Condensed.

From Wikipedia:

SpongeBob Comics was a comic book series based on the animated TV show SpongeBob SquarePants, published by United Plankton Pictures and distributed by Bongo Comics. It was initially published every two months in the United States beginning in February 2011 and was published monthly from June 2012 to October 2018.

Issue 41 is from February 11, 2015 . The masthead is very likely lettering and doesn’t use a font. “Now Playing! Exclusive Engagement!”, “Star of the Show”, and “A 24-Page Tour de Farce!” are set in House-a-rama Kingpin. The first names of SpongeBob SquarePants and Squidward Tentacles are in Dave Gibbons and their last names are set in all-caps Univers (85 Extra Black, vertically stretched), both with drop shadow. ITC Stone Sans Italic is used for the price and issue number, Futura is used for the copyright notice, and the light version of Futura Condensed is used for “Mr. SquarePants and Mr. Tentacles appear by special arrangement with the Krusty Krab, home of the Krabby Patty.”

Nickelodeon AKA Nick rebranded in 2017 with the help of Argentinian design studio Superestudio. The rebrand utilizes René Bieder’s Galano Grotesque. Their case study describes it as a “Confident, no frills, modern sans-serif with some attitude”.

Built around the concept of “Kids First,” we developed the rebrand showcasing a diverse array of school-age children interacting with the world and characters of Nickelodeon in a playful and surreal mix of live-action and graphics. The project consisted of more than 250 deliverables, including bumpers, IDs, promo toolkits and graphic developments for social media and off-air use for the US channel, with updated elements for the international channels to follow. — Superestudio

You know, that one show about a blue bird and his friends that got buried under all the territory SpongeBob and the Louds have taken for themselves.

US website