Citrus Skies

A Web Design Blast from the Past

7 December 2006

Clearing out some old junk to make way for the new arrival in our house, I stumbled across an old CD from Digit, a design publication, dating back to 1998. Whilst nothing spectacular in itself, it led me on a trip down memory lane that made me realise my first commercial web design work had in fact been several years earlier than I’d previously remembered.

Back at the start of 1998, I was on a ‘year out’ from university, working for a local software company, when someone decided that it would be a good idea to get a couple of the students, myself included, to create the company’s first intranet site. It wasn’t anything fancy, but we did a good enough job to be asked to redevelop the external website for the company, which up to that point had been a simple one page “me too” site.

These days, the idea of entrusting your company’s website to a couple of students may be mind-boggling. However, even more unbelievable was the complete lack of input we received from senior levels of the company as to how the site should look or what it should contain. We really were given free reign over the entire site.

Somehow, I ended up being responsible for the design of the site and, whilst it may not rank amongst my best work, I’m still proud of the site that we created. It embodied many of ideas and principles that I still use in my work today, combining simplicity, clarity and (even though I say it myself) good looks.

It wasn’t to last. Within a year, the dot-com bubble overtook us all and the site that we had created was replaced by a new one developed by an external “Web Marketing” company. I know I’m biased, but I don’t think the company’s site was ever as good after that.

Still, given that I’d almost completely forgotten about that website, its nice to be look back on another step in path that led me to where I am today.

Article Tags: student, university, web design, memories