Blast from the past

I thought it might be fun to do a bit of time traveling and go back to the 90’s, to see what kinds of things I was doing as a young, punk designer.

At the time, I WAS a punk/goth/feral chic with blue and purple dreadlocks who absolutely refused to conform to workplace dress standards. I wore kicker boots and wild outfits into the office. Besuited clients were paraded past my office as though I were a zoo exhibit, and I was often introduced as “This is Bea. She’s our creative. As you can see, she’s very creative!”

One other thing to note — back then, there was no such thing as IA, UX, UI, CX etc. There weren’t separate roles — as a web designer, I did everything from visual design to usability to interaction to coding.

Sydney Kings c.1995 (The Art of Zen)

This digital composite billboard won me a Highly Commended in the Macromedia People’s Choice Awards for digital imaging. Creating a high-res image suitable for use on a billboard was definitely a challenge at the time.

It was created on an early Mac-clone with only about 4Mb of RAM and maybe a 100Mb hard drive — can’t remember — using Photoshop 4, before layers and only one level of undo! It would take up to 30 mins to render a single action and then if it was wrong, another 30 mins to undo.

Much tea was consumed… and sending the image to print over Telnet was another kind of special hell.

AGL retail. c. 1996 (Polymedia)

Background design for an interactive touchscreen POS info kiosk. This was cutting edge technology at the time — screen resolution was a massive 640 x 480pp. Look at those bevels… no one makes ‘em like this anymore! Luckily.

Channel 7. c. 1996 (Polymedia)

My first project as an Art Director was designing an interactive CD-ROM for Channel 7 to use as a sales tool for selling advertising packages during the 1998 Nagano Winter Olympics.

The curved sliding menu bar I designed was quite a headache for the developers. The highlight was spending hours in the video editing suite and getting to use an Avid system.

Desktop magazine feature article. c. 1996

I was invited to design a double-page spread for Desktop magazine and was also featured as one of the “upcoming hot new designers”.

McDonalds Australia. c. 1997 (Hothouse)

In the midst of the McLibel case, I designed the first ever website for McDonalds Australia. It was still very early in the world of websites and I learnt a lot about the difference between advertising and web design on this one.

For example, longevity. McDonalds wanted to launch the site to tie into the launch of The Fifth Element, which McDonalds sponsored and (in another first) was doing overt product placement throughout. But websites take a lot longer to develop than ads and by the time the site was launched, The Fifth Element was old news and the space theme no longer made sense.

One of the cutting edge things the site had was a game section for kids. At the time, there was a betamax vs VHS-style tussle going on between Shockwave Flash and MBed.

Did we build the site in the platform that became the dud or the standard? Well let’s just say it doesn’t matter much now, given that Flash too has now succumbed to new, better technology 🤪

Another first — and a rather ambitious one — was the ability to order food through the website. There was no automation — this was a time when web design needed to be done by cutting everything into tiny little pieces (all square) and only 256 colours were available. It was well before CSS, CMS and e-commerce. So orders were put through via email.

Filter magazine. c.1997

I designed several feature spreads for experimental magazine Filter, one of which was on a rope fetish performance which I also photographed.

Remember when websites had splash pages? Well the Filter website went one step further — it had an animated tunnel! Which I designed. Can’t remember if it was an animated GIF or created in Flash…

Philips Australia. c. 1998 (Hothouse)

I was particularly proud of the design of the ‘video wall’ on this site, and that the design didn’t look like it was made from cut up graphics — both of which were technically very difficult to do in 1998.

The Loveseat. c. 1998–2000

I was part of the crew of The Loveseat, a creative collective running events in warehouses in the inner city. This was one outlet that allowed me to go crazy pushing the boundaries of what was possible and being completely unlimited creatively. I loved coming up with a new design for the promo website each time we ran an event — which was about every 3 months or so over 3-ish years. Best parties EVA!!

Tiwi Art. c. 1999 (Monitor Interactive)

There are three art centres on the Tiwi Islands and hundreds of amazingly talented artists. To get the right look and feel for each centre, I was flown to Darwin and spent a week on the islands, visiting each of the communities.

It was kind of early co-design — except there was no internet at all on the islands and many people had never seen a laptop, let alone a website!

This was the first time I tried designing a horizontally scrolling website — they were all the rage for a brief period around 1999.

Dream It, Scream It. c. 1999 (Reach Out)

As part of Reach Out’s Chill Cafe, targeted at young people struggling with mental health, I was invited to create a little animated tool called Dream It, Scream It to allow people to write down thoughts that might be troubling them and blast them into the ether. Or write a wish and let it fly free. I drew and animated the drawings and built the tool in Flash.

Monitor interactive c.1999

I enjoyed the opportunity while working at Monitor to explore pushing the creative boundaries and what the technology could do even more, with the enthusiastic support of my awesome creative director and Flash developer (now a mermaid photographer!) We did some technically quite complex and pretty unique web design things.

Wilcom c.1999–2001 (Monitor Interactive)

Monitor’s parent company, Wilcom, was kind of like the Adobe of the embroidery design world.

I worked on several series of training CD-ROMs for the different embroidery software packages Wilcom developed, as well as websites, packaging and promotional materials. TBH, the training CD’s for Bernina Artista were one of the strangest (and un-me) things I ever designed.

Ah drop down pull out menus — remember those?

The PET CDs had some pretty advanced features at the time, including an embedded help video talking head and interactive how-to videos — screen captures of the software being used that users could watch and interact with while trying it out themselves.

20–20.org c.1996–2000

Before social media, before Medium, before WordPress, if you wanted a website, you had to make your own. The only people who had a website outside of commercial companies were the hackers, the geeks and the zippies — those who worked in the industry and in the know. 20-20.org was my web baby. It was 100% experimental self-expression and evolved every year. It was a place for me to showcase my art, write stories and blog before blogging was a thing…

5000 Fingers of Dr.T. c. 1996–2000

Electronic duo, The 5000 Fingers of Dr.T. was a Clan Analogue act. One half of which was my then boyfriend, now husband, Adam. In 1999, the 5000 Fingers released their third album, Buttsqueezer. I designed the cover art and took the photos.

The website, another horizontally scrolling design, was a finalist in the IDN (International Designers Network) Design Awards and published in their awards journal.

The website was given a fresh new look in 2001 when the band released their final EP mr.sauvo.

Thanks for coming on this little stroll down memory lane with me. I hope you enjoyed it!