“BUZZ OFF” bookmark

I came across a small collection of vintage bookmarks, of which the most interesting and charming are these two from Sunshine Thoughts, a trademark of Antioch Publishing Company.

These bookmarks are the sort of thing that would be sold at a counter display in bookshops and museum giftshops in the 1980s (at least, judging from my own experience of the 1980s).

“BUZZ OFF” is in Television, with the TV tube’s scanlines and the bouncing baseline being a sort of synaesthetic reference to the bee’s flight and sound.

The rounded sans used for “I’m trying to read!” is Formula.

The font in the “book worm Strikes Again” bookmark is Octopuss. The bookmark itself is modelled after a worm-ridden piece of wood, with real holes punched into it.

One the back the “Sunshine Thoughts” wordmark is in Corporate Image, note the two forms of t.

The UK copyright notice is in Optima, and the US copyright notice looks like Helvetica Condensed.

Reverse of “BUZZ OFF”; Copyright 1985

“Book worm” bookmark

Reverse of “book worm”; Copyright 1976; Made in U.S.A.

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 Acornsoft's wordmark on the spine appears to be in ITC Avant Garde Gothic Condensed, with an O that has been replaced by an acorn.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.

Trouble by Milton Bradley, a division of Hasbro, Inc., 1986, with game instructions in English and Spanish. Smaller texts additionally feature Helvetica and Helvetica Condensed.

From Wikipedia:

Trouble (known as Frustration in the UK and Kimble in Finland) is a board game in which players compete to be the first to send four pieces all the way around a board. Pieces are moved according to the roll of a die. Trouble was developed by the Kohner Brothers and initially manufactured by Irwin Toy Ltd., later by Milton Bradley (now part of Hasbro). The game was launched in America in 1965.

The “Trouble” logo as used for the 1986 edition appears to be based on Letraset’s Frankfurter. The designer added a yellow contour and maybe also made some alterations, resulting in differences regarding the counters of R and B and the middle arm of E.

The “Pop-O-Matic” logo used tightly spaced ITC Avant Garde Gothic Bold. The same typeface is also used for the white text underneath.

Trouble by Hasbro Canada Inc., 1986, with game instructions in English and French. The white text at the bottom is set in Futura.

Double Trouble edition, 1987.

The travel edition from 1989 shows the Trouble logo in unmodified Frankfurter, i.e. without contour. “Travel Games” appears to be in another rounded face from 1970, Formula.