Time Machine / Website Designs from the 90s
January 15th, 2010 - Time Machine
The internet is probably the largest and (to alot of people) the most accessible source of information around today. If you want to know what sits next to Oxygen in the Periodic Table, find your nearest beauty salon or simply catch up with the latest news, just tap a few words into your browser window and away you go. It’s hard to imagine a world when business cards didn’t have a ‘www’ address on them, when the phrase ‘Google it’ wasn’t around and when you couldn’t shop ‘online’. And yet it’s really only the last 10-20 years that the general public has been using websites.
Websites were still at an early stage in the 90s. Designs were simplistic and websites were not really interactive. Information tended to be positioned in a small space in the centre – with lots of empty space all around. This was because people’s screens were smaller than today and in addition to that, people were not used to scrolling up and down the page. However, considering that websites were still relatively new in the 90s, any company that had developed a site – even if it was a single page was forward thinking and ahead of the game. Here we take a look at a selection (with thanks to WayBackMachine).
The American Broadcasting Company site (Oct 1996).
The Apple site (Apr 1997).
The Bank of Scotland site (Jan 1998).
The Google site (Dec 1998).
The BBC site (Dec 1996).
The Guardian site (Feb 1997).
The ITV site (Jun 1998).
The Yahoo site (Jan 1997).
Disclaimer: We are not attempting to take any credit for the above work – we have had nothing to do with any of the designs shown. If you have any questions regarding this please contact us.
January 18th, 2010 at 10:57 am
Looking back in time on the internet is not really something which is that easy to do in the sense that it no longer actually exists (a contrast to looking back at old print design). Design on the web is constantly changing with new technologies & new styles becoming popular/possible. I’m intrigued to know where you sourced these old site designs from? They’re really interesting to see, thanks for posting them.