Inside back cover advert for Repton 2 from Superior Software.

Repton was a hugely successful and influential game on the BBC Micro, and spawned a host of sequels and knock-offs, including an open-world game with end-user created content. In a discussion of it in the book Acorn – A World in Pixels (in an article titled “The Making of Repton”) I find Chris Payne, marketing manager for Repton 2, to be one of us: he is quoted as saying “I used to sit in bed at night browsing through books of typefaces [...] and came across a newish typeface called Dave, so I asked Mike Ellis to use it for the strap line at the top of the Repton 2 advert.”

Interesting, as I had not heard of a typeface called Dave, so I went looking for the Repton materials. Time passes and it becomes hard to determine exactly which advert Chris Payne was referring to, but I note the Repton 2 advert in Micro User #36 does have a strapline... in a font i don’t recognise.

“Repton” is in the instantly recognisable Baby Teeth, which is also used for the earlier Repton, and the later Reptons. The 2 is in an airbrushed version of Quicksilver.

The Superior Software wordmark and “Acorn Electron / BBC Micro” are in ITC Bauhaus.

The body and much of the secondary text is set (tight-not-touching) in, well, I want to say ITC Avant Garde Gothic, and the £ sign very much wants me to say that, but the numeral 1 does not. An alternate from E+F?

Repton is the name of the character you play, and the average internet consensus seems to be that Repton is a lizard. Repton is also a village in Derbyshire and a school, but those are apparently unrelated.

The unfolded inlay (front) for the cassette version of Repton 2 (for the BBC Model B and Electron). Blue Ribbon (wordmark in Edda) was a budget label, publishing jointly with Superior Software. Because this is the budget release, this is likely a few years after the original 1985 release.

LISP on the BBC Microcomputer, Arthur Norman and Gillian Cattell.

The BBC Microcomputer was a 8-bit 6502 based microcomputer made in the UK in the 1980s. It was designed and built by Acorn, and due to partnership with the BBC it became immensely popular in schools.

Acornsoft was Acorn's in-house software division and produced, among other things, professional quality programming language implementations accompanied with good quality manuals. A selection of which is shown here.

Typography is consistent across the series of manuals: Titles, subtitles, and authors on the covers are in Formula (quite possibly Formula One by Letraset, which would have been popular at the time). Acornsoft's wordmark on the spine appears to be in ITC Avant Garde Gothic Condensed, with an O that has been replaced by an acorn.

The programming source code on the cover of LISP is in Courier.

BCPL for the BBC Microcomputer, Chris Jobson and John Richards.

FORTH on the BBC Microcomputer, Richard De Grandis-Harrison. The “curve” on the cover shows two levels of the space-filling Hilbert Curve.

The Acornsoft wordmark which features on the spines of all the books.