The soft murmur of laughter and long lines immediately greeted visitors as they entered the Nostalgila’26 Visual Communication Design (DKV) exhibition hall at Universitas Indo Global Mandiri (IGM).
The exhibition is scheduled to run from Monday (May 18) through Thursday (May 21). Among the various stunning works of art on display, there is one booth that stands out and is constantly surrounded by visitors. A small, aesthetically designed wooden box stands firmly there.
That is Paperbox, a unique photobooth innovation created by Andika Prasetya, a sixth-semester DKV student.
Don’t be fooled by its minimalist exterior. Inside that compact wooden box, Andika has installed a high-quality camera and a smart tablet that serves as an interactive monitor. Its main appeal becomes apparent only after the shutter button is pressed. Without a long wait, a sheet of white paper slides out of the box through a thermal printer. It is that instantly produced black-and-white photo with its distinctive texture that has successfully made visitors fall in love with it and left them curious.
The wooden box immediately caught the students’ attention. They began experimenting with it, curious to see how it worked. As a result, right in front of the wooden box, visitors—ranging from those striking formal poses to those striking funny poses with friends, and even couples sharing romantic moments—were all beautifully captured by the Paperbox camera. The excitement peaked when the thermal printer started working; visitors scrambled to see the monochrome dot-matrix prints that gave off a retro vibe, then proudly showed them off to their friends.
This self-service thermal paper photobooth was recognized as a refreshing and uniquely new addition to the city of Palembang.
The creator of the concept, Andika, admitted that before participating in the Nostalgila’26 exhibition, his innovative work had already begun to make waves by being featured in several popular coffee shops in Palembang, where the response from local coffee lovers was just as enthusiastic.
“We want the sweet memories from the exhibition to not just be stored digitally in phone memories, but to be transformed into tangible physical prints that can be taken home right away to be displayed on a bedroom cabinet or used as a bookmark for a favorite book,” he concluded (andhiko ta)
