As we celebrate our 25th year as a digital marketing agency, our reflections on our first quarter century have led to a series of “really?” moments - those instances when you can’t quite believe that - (a) we’ve come so far and (b) we’ve come from a very strange place - one that looked like the super galactic future.
So, we thought it would be a fun (and useful) exercise to reimagine the digital world of 1999 and re-create what our website may well have looked like, with the limited design and dev software available at the time.
Apart from being a great nostalgia trip, it’s a salutary reminder of just how primitive the digital world really was in its formative years - and yet we already wanted so much more.
Digital banking was in its infancy and the year before Applied was born, a start-up business called lastminute.com defied expectations and proved that people were actually prepared to buy on the internet. Now look at us.
A massive thanks to Connor and Paul in our dev team and Mike and Jacob on the design side for doing an ace job, taking us back to the future. Not least because one of them wasn't even at the embryo stage when Applied came into the world.
So, here you have it, our take on 90s internet nostalgia. Relieve the “dial up” dream with our 1999 web interface, featuring:
Initial loading bar with dial-up sound (remember the joy of that phoneline cacophony?)
Moveable desktop style icons (have a play and see what happens)
Mute buttons - 90s functionality at its very best
Toggle desktop button - as close to a pre-analogue world as you can get.
“On a serious note, while we’ve had enormous fun with this blast into the past (especially given that this was championed by people who’ve never used a fax or a public payphone) what it serves to prove is that the speed of change that we have witnessed in the past 25 years will be nothing like the next 25. We’re excited by every unfolding possibility, and we hope you’ll stay with us for the ride.
Richard Hatfield, Managing Director
If you’ve got a digital project coming up, why not talk to us and let’s see what we can do.
Email hello@applieddigital.co.uk or call us on 01484 203010 and ask for Richard, Mike or Jen.
