The other day I posted a great poster for ‘Old Joy‘, which sparked an interesting article over at the guardian blog about great film poster art. With this at the back of my mind I was browsing some of my friends photos on flickr yesterday and came across a great batch of video covers from the 1980’s, most of the films I’ve never even heard of but I started to wonder what the hell happened to vhs cover artwork too? and why in general has film artwork gone to hell?

There must have been a reason why they started using artwork on the front of vhs when the home video market took off in the early 80’s… to make the films look more exciting than they were? maybe it was just easier to get across what the studio wanted with a piece of airbrush art opposed to a photo montage (photoshop wasn’t around… obviously). Maybe I’m overlooking the obvious… it was cheaper? All I know is seeing Stallone’s sweaty fist, a silver eagle (complete with lens flare and everything) and a truck smashing up a car… all rendered by hand, still makes me want to see the film (again) more than this dvd cover.

Older dvds are one thing (The R1 of ‘Over the Top’ uses the above artwork) but the fact is nobody is producing cover art anymore… maybe it only ever came down to cost and thanks to photoshop it’s much cheaper to slap some floating heads down on a page. It’s down to films like the ATHF movie to produce it (even if it is only in mockery)

Maybe airbrush art just isn’t cool any more “what is this…. like an animation or something?!?” ….. look at the cover to “Mit dem Ruecken zur Wand” AKA “No Safe Heaven” and tell me that.

It’s sad that it’s come to this, but the bottom line rules everything. It’s good to see some design agencies like all city media are keeping it alive, albeit on outskirts of the mainstream.

Check out the great collection of VHS artwork in Peter-Noster’s flickr stream here

Oh and check out All City Media’s site, even if its only to see the versions of posters they didn’t use (I like the brick one at the bottom here)