There were a ton of ads that looked like this in computer magazines throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Not all ads looked like these, but a lot of them did. Not all of them were full-page, but many of them were.
I found these four examples by flipping through a random issue of MacUser magazine (August 1987 in case you're curious). Didn't take me long to have enough examples.
- Some ad agency's house style?
- Style guidelines of a sufficiently influential magazine that all these companies were also advertising in (or the parent company of several magazines)?
- Convergent evolution?
