VHS Tapes, Wacky Cable Access Shows and Graphic Design.

We’re suckers for comedy here at Pfahlert Creative Labs, and the fellas over at Found Footage Festival are as well. The Found Footage Festival is a live comedy event and screening featuring unusual and humorous clips fromVHSvideotapes gathered from thrift stores, garage sales, warehouses, estate sales, and dumpsters throughout the United States. You can also enjoy a bunch of clips on their website, but beware: It IS a time killer.

The poster design above was what we created for their tours in a vast variety of towns in the United States. The project stalled out, but we loved this thing so much we wanted to at least show it and get some feedback from the masses. The concept that the VHS tape could become a character himself (or herself) seemed quite fitting and fun, so we made this guy smiling from ear to ear with twisted video tape. Even the eyebrows are made from clips of videotape. The colors all overprint too, which is always nice to look at. The hand writing that reads “DO NOT TAPE OVER!” was done by Mark Pfahlert, a very close relative to The Pfahlert Creative Labs. The background image is made up 18 videotapes we still had at the house, photographed then duplicated. We had some awesome things labeled like “David Letterman Show, 1989”, “Mystery Science Theater 3000” and even had an obscure Steven Wright special, complete with all the commercials.

Added in the gallery below are two shots of the actual videotape we pulled out of the tape to scan.

We hope maybe one day this actually gets produced, so tell the cool guys over at FFF that you would happily shell out the cash for it. Long live analog tape in all its forms! Make sure to check out the detail photos below…