If you read my last week’s article on horrible corporate designs from the past, you know that the 90ies were the time web designers would rather not remember. I also made a promise I’ll bring you some great websites from the era - a promise that turned out to be a grave mistake indeed. Not many designers were brave enough to design for resolutions higher than 800×600, or to break from the usual (read: ugly) design patterns from that time - at least none of them can be found on the Wayback Machine. So, what promised to be a fun afternoon turned into a desperate quest, in which I’ve browsed through several hundred old web designs, and I’ve found some that are great, some that are weird, and some that are at least interesting for this or that reason. Here’s a short rundown in alphabetical order.

*Note: if the pages load slowly, wait or try refreshing. Wayback machine isn’t really know for its speed.

Amazon. A showcase of usability, Amazon was one of the first big sites that had design that stretches to any resolution. It looks decent on my 19” LCD screen today, and i bet it looked just as good on a 14” CRT in 1998. Unfortunately, the Wayback Machine and Amazon aren’t exactly in love so the best live page I could find was from 2000, while the screenshot from 1998 I provided here was found on this page.

Apple. Whatever you think of Apple and their products, you can’t deny they’ve always had style. You can see it on their webpage, which - besides the obligatory 400ish pixel wide design - looked decent even back in 1999!

Dell. I wouldn’t call this one a masterpiece by any stretch of imagination, but at least there’s nothing wrong with it (unlike most corporate sites in the 90ies). Those rare designers who actually applied some principles of design into web design easily got decent results even with limited technological resources that were available in 1996. Those ‘powered by’ images ruin the design a little, but that was the fashion back then; it was like having a mullet in the 80ies.

Donnie Darko. The one, the legendary - the official Donnie Darko web site. It was redesigned to its current design in 2001. which might not look that old, but then you have to remember it was completely done in Flash, and to this day it remains the best single use of Flash technology ever. It had it all: originality, fast loading, great design, cool puzzles and a sense of mystery; hell, it even managed to scare you a couple of times. It was just as good as watching the movie. And it hasn’t aged a bit. No need to use the Wayback Machine here, as the site still stands as it were in 2001. Check it out at www.donniedarko.com.

Fluke. Fluke corporation used to produce electronic testing tools (it still does, as well as various other electronic equipment), and they were one of the first 100 web domains registered, back in 1986! Their oldest archived front page at wayback machine dates from 1996, and lo and behold - they used an image map for the menu back then, and did it quite well. Basically, if you saw this site today, you would never notice it’s 10 years old (actually, this design may be older, but the Wayback Machine doesn’t go earlier than 1996.) If you ask me, it looks better than their current design.

Freeride. The cartoonish design elegantly avoids ugly blue links and looks fresh today just as it was in 1997. Even when you pass the front page, the site still looks pretty good, and it’s definitely more usable than most of today’s site. These guys also had a utopian business idea - free net for everyone. Maybe that’s why they eventually went out of business.

Gadget news. The design of this (to me) little known site is at least as early as 1998. It’s not spectacular by today’s standards, but back then its graphics were as high-tech as they come.

Radiohead. You have to give them credit for this design. This was the time when it when simplicity was frowned upon, and everyone wanted their web page to look as high tech as possible (with the results horrendously ugly by today’s standards). But not Radiohead - they liked it real simple. I remember when I saw that page back in 1996 when I was a huge fan of the band, and it really was a breath of fresh air. Check how their site changed through time here, here, here and here - it never really looked like a web page, but it was always damn original.

Salon. These guys knew usability back in 1998. The images aren’t preserved in the archive, but you can still see that the site was clear, usable, almost aristocratic in its design. A similar, two years younger design of Salon can be seen here.

Urbandesires. These guys experimented with their design a lot, starting with some early blunders but developing really quickly over time. However, sometimes, like in this instance from 1997, they were way ahead of their time. And when I saw these two (here and here) versions from 1999, I can easily declare this site the most consistently great web design of the nineties.

Of course, I’m sure there are many more great early web designs, but are either unavailable at Wayback Machine or I wasn’t able to find them. If you know of any, please send them my way. To wrap this up, here are some quick honorable mentions and oddities I’ve found during the research for this piece:

FedEx. One detail saves this oldie from 1996 from mediocrity: the ‘Express menu’ at the bottom, which looks like something designed today. The rest of the site is nothing to get excited about.

www.vigilante-electronics.com - OK, these guys are old, old, OLD school. Look at it carefully. It’s a WEB SHOP. And it looks like that since at least 1997.

Intel was also one of the earliest registered domains, back in the 80ies, and their design was nothing spectacular, but also not too shabby.

Adobe’s website design from 1996. Doesn’t hurt the eyes (too much).

Microsoft’s webpage from the nineties has a nice pixel-graphics feel to it. I certainly like it more than their current web.

Drudgereport.com may not look pretty, but it’s damn usable. That’s probably why they basically didn’t change the design of the site in 10 years.