A Dallas rental store, a franchise and a sale to Viacom.

Blockbuster began in Dallas, Texas, in 1985. English Wikipedia says its founder, David Cook, had run Cook Data Services, a business supplying software to the Texas oil and gas industry, before he bought into a Dallas video-store franchise called Video Works. When the franchise would not let him decorate his store’s interior in blue and yellow, Wikipedia says, citing a 2017 report in D Magazine, he left it and opened his own store under the company Blockbuster Video Inc. Wikipedia dates the opening to 19 October 1985, citing Bloomberg Businessweek and the History Channel. The name borrowed the Hollywood term for a hit film.

Cook soon began franchising the store. In 1987, English Wikipedia records, Wayne Huizenga, a co-founder of Waste Management, agreed with his associate John Melk to acquire Blockbuster stores; under Huizenga the company took over many of its franchised stores and bought rival chains, among them Major Video in the late 1980s and the mid-Atlantic chain Erol’s in 1990. In 1992, Wikipedia says, it bought the Sound Warehouse and Music Plus record chains and formed Blockbuster Music. From 1990 the company also put its name on a college football game played near Miami, the Blockbuster Bowl, before withdrawing the sponsorship after three editions.

In 1994 Viacom acquired Blockbuster, English Wikipedia says, citing The Baltimore Sun and CBS News; Viacom was then in a bidding contest for Paramount. In 1996, Wikipedia says, the stores, until then called Blockbuster Video, were renamed simply Blockbuster, and in November that year the company confirmed it was moving its headquarters from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to the Renaissance Tower in downtown Dallas. Viacom spun the company off in October 2004, according to Wikipedia. By then the chain was renting games as well as films and running an online DVD-rental service, Blockbuster Online.

A torn ticket, ITC Machine and two colours.

The Blockbuster mark is a torn ticket carrying the name in squared capitals. Fonts In Use, in an entry contributed in May 2014, says Cook worked on the identity with the Dallas agency Rominger Advertising and its art director Lee Dean, and that Dean chose ITC Machine, the capitals typeface by Carnase and Bonder. The entry illustrates the mark with a 1988 newspaper advertisement from The Pittsburgh Press that pairs ITC Machine with Helvetica. English Wikipedia, citing the same entry, says the logo changed slightly in 1996 but kept ITC Machine.

Dean described his thinking in a comment posted beneath that entry on 14 May 2014, in which he says he designed the logo and the rest of the original corporate identity. Someone had mocked up a ticket for Cook in Broadway, a typeface Dean called expected and trite; he chose ITC Machine because it fitted the name, he wrote, and would have used the bold weight but feared its small counters would fill in when printed at small sizes. He turned the movie ticket into a torn ticket, he wrote, because tearing marks the moment a filmgoer is ready to enter the theatre. His opening comp showed tickets in several colours for the deliverables; Cook wanted to attract investors, Dean wrote, so the scheme was toned down to the blue and yellow that became the final design. In the same thread he said the Hollywood sign had nothing to do with his choice of font.

Those two colours carried into the stores. TheWrap, writing in March 2021 about the documentary The Last Blockbuster, recalled the “canvas of blue and yellow” of a store visit alongside the popcorn and the plastic cases. After the corporate business closed, English Wikipedia says, citing Business Insider in 2020, there was no longer a corporate source of branded supplies, and the remaining franchisees had to design and produce their own. In October 2026 the Bend store’s website sold hoodies, socks, sweatpants and a coin bank under the Blockbuster name.

Design and documentation.

A music, video or electronics shop carried its name on far more than the sign over the door. The same mark turned up on the fascia above a mall entrance, on the plastic rental case handed across the counter, on the paper or plastic bag a customer carried home, on a membership card and on the small price sticker pressed onto a cassette, compact disc or box.

Each of those surfaces asked something different of a logo. A store sign had to read from across a car park or a shopping concourse; a rental case had to survive being opened and returned many times; a bag had to look right when folded, creased and printed in one or two flat colours; a price sticker had to carry a name at the size of a fingernail. Colours that worked on an illuminated sign did not always survive cheap printing, so many retail marks leaned on a few strong, flat tones and simple letterforms.

Each guide in this group sets out who started the store, who has owned the name since, and what became of it, and it marks plainly what rests only on a company’s own word. The palettes and type are our interpretation, not reproductions.

From Dish Network to a franchised store in Bend.

Blockbuster filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on 23 September 2010, English Wikipedia records. Dish Network, the satellite-television company of Englewood, Colorado, won the auction for the business in April 2011, Wikipedia says; TheWrap reported in 2021 that Dish bought Blockbuster out of bankruptcy that year. On 6 November 2013, The Hollywood Reporter reported, Dish said it would close the remaining company-owned US stores and distribution centres by early 2014 and end the DVD-by-mail service, while franchised stores would stay open; its chief executive, Joseph P. Clayton, said the company continued “to see value in the Blockbuster brand.” Dish no longer grants new Blockbuster franchises, TheWrap reported in March 2021. Dish itself is now part of EchoStar, which completed its merger with Dish Network, The Verge reported on 2 January 2024.

The name survives as a shop in Bend, Oregon. The store’s own history says Ken and Debbie Tisher, who moved to Bend in 1990, opened a Pacific Video store at the site in 1992 and became a Blockbuster franchise in June 2000. English Wikipedia, citing Time and The New York Times, says it became the last Blockbuster in the United States in July 2018 and the last in the world in March 2019, and that Ken Tisher licenses the trademark from Dish each year, citing The Independent in 2021. Its general manager, Sandi Harding, told the Bend television station KTVZ in February 2023 that the store sells its merchandise online as well as renting films in person.

The store has become a subject in its own right. English Wikipedia lists a 2020 documentary, The Last Blockbuster, made by Bend filmmakers and later streamed on Netflix; Airbnb sleepovers for local guests in September 2020; and a 2022 Netflix sitcom, Blockbuster, based on a fictionalized version of the store. In February 2023 the store released a commercial on Instagram timed to the Super Bowl halftime show, Wikipedia says, citing Deadline; KTVZ reported that the spot was filmed around Bend. In October 2026 the store’s website called it “The Lone Survivor Blockbuster.”

For a design guide, Blockbuster shows how a torn ticket, one typeface and two colours can keep a name recognisable long after the company behind it stopped trading. Compare Hollywood Video, the Oregon rival Blockbuster tried to buy, and Netflix, whose streaming service carried the documentary about the Bend store. For this guide we use ticket blue, ticket yellow and ink with a squared sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Blockbuster’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.