ExhibiTricks: The Museum Exhibit Design Blog: Tape is one of those things that you often use, but rarely think about.
So here's a listing of a variety of speciality tapes for your creative design toolbox! Just click on the title link above each tape description to go to a web page to purchase that tape or for more info.
4 comments:
Finally! A...extremely short list of useless tapes. Cool. I was so excited about this article when it appeared on the greenpage, but upon closer inspection...they spec things like blue painter's tape, gaff, and vet wrap. None of the things listed are really all that new of exciting, and most function as a replacement for duct tape, which is horrible for any design purpose. Very few design applications would be a good use of veterinarian's wrap, for example, which is made to stick only to itself without adhesive (so that it doesn't catch in fur). While super helpful for wrapping an injury, there aren't many design applications that call for something self-adhesive and flexible that can only really wrap fully around something. I hope that someday there is a more comprehensive list of tapes and glue alternatives for sticking two things together impermanently: tape's great strength is that it is (for the most part) removable. It would be great to fund a product that is as strong and as sticky as glue dots that is easy to cut to shapes, won't take up paint, and comes in tape form- someday, hopefully, one of these articles will find one.
As someone who uses gaffer’s tape for pretty much everything, it is nice to see some different options in the tape world without having to do much research myself. I have not heard of many of these tapes before, and I have to say that I’m pretty surprised at how specific the tasks can be for each kind of tape – someone really put a lot of thought into each product. I like the idea of non-sticky self-adhering tape, but I question the ease of usability when it comes to unraveling this stuff. I’m one of those people who sucks at unrolling saran wrap properly so I can only imagine the worst case scenario for me using this tape. I’m also pretty curious about clear duct tape because I just can’t imagine what it would look like in real life. Also after seeing this article all I want to do is buy all of these tapes and try them out.
I seriously question the usefulness of some of the tapes listed in this article. For starters there’s the Vypar X-Treme tape. What exactly am I supposed to do with something that only works with water or wet surfaces? Sure its cool that it exists but I don’t think it would be all that useful most of the time in a theater, maybe if there was some elaborate water feature as part of the set. Then there’s the empty and packed tape, this seems more like some kind of novelty item than something that would actually be useful. First of all, once you’ve packed the empty boxes you have the same problem the tape was trying to solve, since now you have a bunch of boxes marked empty that are actually full. Sure you could pull the tape off but if you’re going to do that why not just use a piece of paper and some other kind of tape and make a label? Or even easier just look in the box, if there’s stuff in it or its been sealed up then that means its packed.
Despite how technical this particular post is, I appreciate it very much! The world of tape is an extremely vast one and knowing which tape to use when can honestly save you so much headache. For me, finding the right tape to use in projects have sadly evolved from trial and error (I have destroyed many paint jobs. DR would be very upset). I feel like Gaffer's tape is sort of a well kept secret inside the theater and film world. Normal people don't usually know what gaf tape is and why it's so much better than duct tape. For the sole reason listed in the article-- "duct tape without the sticky residue" -- gaf tape reigns supreme. There is nothing worse than taking duct tape off of a bundle of electrical cord and having it be tacky for the rest of its life. There's also a bunch of tape listed in this article like Vypar, Vet Wrap and others that I have never heard of! I definitely want to explore what types of tape work more efficiently because sometimes Scotch tape just doesn't damn cut it. I never want to go back to the days of sticking together paper with blue painter's tape just to find it unrolled the next day.
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