The creator of the VIDICOM logo is Melanie Wepler, renowned graphic designer from Hamburg. When Melanie researched on which direction to take, she came up with an unusual proposal. The basis for our new logo is a photograph more than 100 years old – a photo with a unique message and a great tradition.
The VIDICOM runner is part of “Moving Forward”, a photo sequence by Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904), great photographer, brilliant inventor and pioneer of the motion picture.
In 1872 Muybridge was enlisted by Californian governor Leland Stanford to settle a wager not uncommon in horse racing circles at the time: Did a running horse’s legs ever leave the ground all four at a time? Before Muybridge, no-one had ever been able to look closely enough to find out.
Then he set to work. At first, Muybridge produced “little more than silhouettes”, as he regretted himself. Yet he did not give up, until, five years later, he was able to show clearly the stages of the horse’s movement for the first time in history.
After this breakthrough, Muybridge went on to take more than 20,000 photographs of men, women, children, animals and birds in motion using a new chemical process he developed himself and a battery of cameras. These serial photos were an essential link between still photography and the movies. The Zoopraxiscope he invented to bring his photo sequences to life was a forerunner of today’s movie projectors.
“Using the Muybridge photograph for our logo was a great idea”, says VIDICOM founder Peter Bardehle. “There is no better symbol for our work covering good characters, strong images, history and science. It is very dynamic, and there’s a great spirit of discovery behind it. It’s amazing how modern a picture from 1884 can be perceived today.”