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Remember the beauty of physical media with this animated ode to blank VHS covers

Remember the beauty of physical media with this animated ode to blank VHS covers

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It’s hard to remember in today’s digital world, where nearly everything is just a string of code on a hard drive, but physical media used to be beautiful. And not just the giant, colorful album artwork of vinyl records or holographic DVD cases, either: even the nondescript boxes for blank VHS tapes had a certain charm, if you looked for it.

YouTuber and animator 4096’s video “blank vhs covers were kinda beautiful” is the perfect encapsulation of that, gorgeously animating together a series of classic covers from blank VHS tapes from over the years.

4096’s great animation certainly helps the case designs pop, with creative transitions that seamlessly shift from one case to the next, but it’s really the bright geometric shapes and colors that do most of the work. It speaks to a certain level of attention to detail, where even the cases of blank tapes were made to look interesting and appealing.

The internet has become a pretty good place for VHS tape nostalgia, too, with sites like the Vault of VHS Tumblr solely dedicated to preserving old VHS covers, in what might be the ultimate irony — considering that these covers were basically just cheap cardboard sleeves that were quickly thrown away, the best way to appreciate the art of the old analog format is in a solely digital world.