The Lamborghini Countach is a cool-looking car from basically any angle. In pretty much all Western cultures, we read from left-to-right, meaning that our eyes by default see anything headed to the right as going “forward,” while anything going left is headed “backwards.” This even translates to the way that VHS tapes worked in VCRs — The tape was pulled from the left spool to the right spool within the cassette so that we could see the video on our televisions. To reset the film, you had to hit the “rewind” button, moving the magnetic strip back to the left spool from the right.
Given the overall backwards-looking nostalgia of synthwave art, it felt only appropriate to face my illustration of the Countach to the left. Somewhere in the process of experimenting with background elements, the double-left arrow came along, and I realized it looked like the symbol on most “rewind” buttons on VCRs and their associated remotes. And video stores of all kinds had “Be Kind. Rewind” stickers on their tapes, so as to be courteous to the next rental customer (some video stores actually used to charge you an extra dollar if you didn’t rewind the tape!).
Anyways. All kinds of fun retro stuff on this one — the broken sun, spacey background, polygonal mountains, angled grid, space, pastel colors, chrome lettering, and a funky 80s car. The Japanese text down the right hand side reads “Maki Modoshi,” which, according to Google Translate, would be how to say “Be Kind. Rewind.” in Japanese.
Of course, the Lamborghini Countach is an Italian car…
Copyright 2017 Andy Costello