Be Kind Reclaim

I think I can speak for the entire Reclaim team when I say that we’re super pumped to be sponsoring OER for the second year in a row. Last year we flew to Bristol for OER 18 to unveil Reclaim Video and the first ever, in-house production, Domains: Your Digital Identity. We had a blast.

Since then, Reclaim Hosting has used the last year to slowly blend and adopt much of the metaphor behind Reclaim Video. We sent out Domains VHS tapes to potential Domain of One’s Own customers around the states, for example. We even slowly updated our logo and website design from a record label to a VHS store, all the while keeping the same hand-drawn vibe that our customers were used to.

Now in time for the creation of OER19’s full-page ad, I’m excited that we’ll be attending not as Reclaim Video, but as Reclaim Hosting with an even further integrated VHS metaphor.

We’re taking the ^ famous shelf header image that has stood long and proud as a symbol for Reclaim, and turning it into a real-life shelf in (you guessed it) Reclaim Video:

We realized we had quite a bit to talk about at OER, and what better way to do that than with gorgeous VHS cover art?!

We voted as a team to decide what belonged on the shelf, and then divvied up the design work amongst ourselves. I’ll let the others talk about the work that they did, but the final list came down to:

  • Domains 19: Back to the Future – Our upcoming conference on June 10-11th
  • SPLOT: What Do You See? – More info about SPLOTs here & here.
  • The Cursed Gutenberg – The horror around the recent WordPress upgrade
  • DS106: The Cult of 4Life – Does ds106 need an explanation…?
  • OER19: Recentering Open – Paying tribute to OER themes, which just so happen to blend nicely on our shelf
  • YourDomain.com – a play on creating your digital identity and the Reclaim Hosting Splash page.
  • Reclaim Video’s Domains – the in-house production
  • Devo – One of Reclaim Hosting’s server names
  • Be Kind, Reclaim – a play on the ‘Be Kind, Rewind’ stickers.

I worked on Domains19 and YourDomain.com, which I’ll talk about a little more depth below:

I wanted the Domains 19 tape to have a very similar feel to what’s currently on the website: domains.reclaimhosting.com. Both the color bars on the left and the cutout of a hooded figure– a screenshot of a GIF, actually– were created by Ryan Seslow, one of our featured artists for the conference. I found the black VHS cover background (in all of its grungy glory) here. The text was added on Canva.

For YourDomain.com, I wanted it to feel less like a movie cover and more like someone created a recording of themselves and slapped a label on it. (Isn’t that what a website is anyway?) The original cover can be found here. The Media label, originally a sticker for Halloween, can be found here. The text was then added on Canva.

And for your view pleasure, here’s an up close look at the rest of VHS Covers:

So good, right? Can’t wait for what’s to come at OER 19. Also, we may or may not but definitely did order Be Kind, Reclaim stickers to hand out in April. Raise your hand if you want one!! 🙋

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