Initial Ideas

A Zine, which captures the memories of what, is on VHS. Referring back to the second initial idea, being able to sit down and watch these videos in present day are difficult, especially due to the replaced format of recording and watching on DVD. This zine design gives the opportunity to create a unique and special book, which takes stills from VHS and creates it into a physical form. The zine will come encased in a VHS box and have a front and back cover design of a vector VHS. The case and cover will contrast to the colourful and interesting layout of the zine on the inside, representing the importance and sentiment of the memories created in the past, and probably forgotten. Context could be added into the design, by having what’s said in the VHS displayed in the zine; this could possibly make one want to watch the actual VHS itself and see the stills from the zine in full context. 

An Exhibition piece inspired from the London Somerset House ‘Big Bang Data’ exhibition. ‘Cinema Redux’ created by Brendan Dawes creates a visual fingerprint of a movie by capturing a frame every one second. In context Dawes used Hitchcock’s film Vertigo and displayed it frame-by-frame. Following up from this design approach, the initial design would comprise of a VHS tape which when the handle it rotated clockwise, it will reveal stills from Family VHS through a hole in the VHS itself. The design will then allow one to wind the tape back (rotating the handle anti-clockwise) for someone else to see, referencing the rewind-able and re-watchable nature of the VHS cassette. By having the tape still incased in the VHS, it symbolises the difficulty of being able to capture what is inside VHS nowadays, with the ever growing technology industry, VHS is a thing of the past, along with the nature of being able to watch VHS, and watching it with others. 

An Exhibition Invitation to a show, which celebrates the age of visual and motion technology. It will be encased inside of a VHS box, and comes with an easy to make zoetrope, which will bring a snippet of VHS footage to life, using old fashioned technology. The combination of the case and zoetrope will show the contrast and growth of technology in a comical way. Further content will be an invite with further information of the exhibition and a business card. 

Through mock up development, the idea of creating a zoetrope to bring VHS footage to life proved difficult. The VHS footage proved to low in quality to identify through the zoetrope, making movement unidentifiable too. To develop, the zoetrope will animate the exhibition logo.