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70 posts tagged with “history”

One more post down memory lane. Phil Gyford chronicled his first few months online, thirty years ago in 1995. He talks of modems, floppies, email, Usenet, IRC, and friendly strangers on the internet.

I had forgotten how onerous it was to get online back then. Gyford writes:

It’s hard to convey how difficult it was to set things up. So new and alien to me. When reading computer magazines I’d always skipped articles about networking and while the computers at university had been connected together, that was only for the purposes of printing, scanning and transferring files.

First there was the issue of getting online at all. The Internet Starter Kit spent 59 pages explaining how to set up MacTCP, and PPP or SLIP, two different methods of connecting to the internet, the differences of which happily escape me now. I spent a lot of late nights fiddling with control panels and extensions, learning about IP addresses, domain name servers, etc.

And Gyford reminds us just how marvelous the invention of the internet was:

Before the web – and all the rest of it – how could you have shared your words with anyone? Write a letter to a newspaper or magazine and hope they published it a few days or months later? Create your own fanzine and distribute copies one-by-one to strangers, and posted in individually addressed and stamped envelopes? That was it, unless you were going to become a successful journalist or writer. Your reach, your world, was tiny.

But now, then, you could put anything you wanted on your own website and instantly it was visible by anyone in the world. OK, anyone in the world who was also online, which wasn’t many then, and they were all quite similar, but, still… they could be anywhere! And their number was growing.

And you could chat to people in real time and it didn’t matter where they were, they were here in front of you. Send emails back-and-forth to friends without writing letters, and buying stamps, and waiting days or weeks for a response. Instant! Weightless!

The post is worth a read. It’s complete with pictures of some artifacts from that time, including newspaper clippings, invoices, and journal entries.

My first months in cyberspace

My first months in cyberspace

Recalling the difficulties and wonder of getting online for the first time in 1995, including diary extracts from the time.

gyford.com icongyford.com

If you were into computers like I was between 1975 and 1998, you read Byte magazine. It wasn’t just product reviews and spec sheets—Byte offered serious technical depth, covering everything from assembly language programming to hardware architecture to the philosophy of human-computer interaction. The magazine documented the PC revolution as it happened, becoming required reading for anyone building or thinking deeply about the future of computing. It was also thick as hell.

Someone made a visual archive of Byte magazine, showing each page of the printed pages in a zoomable interface:

Before Hackernews, before Twitter, before blogs, before the web had been spun, when the internet was just four universities in a trenchcoat, there was BYTE. A monthly mainline of the entire personal computing universe, delivered on dead trees for a generation of hackers. Running from September 1975 to July 1998, its 277 issues chronicled the Cambrian explosion of the microcomputer, from bare-metal kits to the dawn of the commercial internet. Forget repackaged corporate press releases—BYTE was for the builders.

It’s a fun glimpse into the past before thin laptops, smartphones, and disco-colored gaming PCs.

Grid collage of vintage technology magazine pages and ads, featuring colorful retro layouts, BYTE covers and articles.

Byte - a visual archive

Explore a zoomable visual archive of BYTE magazine: all 277 issues (Sep 1975 - Jul 1998) scanned page-by-page, a deep searchable glimpse into the PC revolution.

byte.tsundoku.io iconbyte.tsundoku.io

The Whole Earth Catalog, published by Stewart Brand several times a year between 1968 and 1972 (and occasionally until 1998), was the internet before the internet existed. It curated tools, books, and resources for self-education and DIY living, embodying an ethos of access to information that would later define the early web. Steve Jobs famously called it “one of the bibles of my generation,” and for good reason—its approach to democratizing knowledge and celebrating user agency directly influenced the philosophy of personal computing and the participatory culture we associate with the web’s early days.

Curated by Barry Threw and collaborators, the Whole Earth Index is a near-complete archive of the issues of the Whole Earth Catalog.

Here lies a nearly-complete archive of Whole Earth publications, a series of journals and magazines descended from the Whole Earth Catalog, published by Stewart Brand and the POINT Foundation between 1968 and 2002. They are made available here for scholarship, education, and research purposes.

The info page also includes a quote from Stewart Brand:

“Dateline Oct 2023, Exactly 55 years ago, in 1968, the Whole Earth Catalog first came to life. Thanks to the work of an ongoing community of people, it prospered in various forms for 32 years—sundry editions of the Whole Earth Catalog, CoEvolution Quarterly, The WELL, the Whole Earth Software Catalog, Whole Earth Review, etc. Their impact in the world was considerable and sustained. Hundreds of people made that happen—staff, editors, major contributors, board members, funders, WELL conference hosts, etc. Meet them here.” —Stewart Brand

Brand’s mention of The WELL is particularly relevant here—he founded that pioneering online community in 1985 as a digital extension of the Whole Earth ethos, creating one of the internet’s first thriving social networks.

View of Earth against black space with large white serif text "Whole Earth Index" overlaid across the globe.

Whole Earth Index

Here lies a nearly-complete archive of Whole Earth publications, a series of journals and magazines descended from the Whole Earth Catalog, published by Stewart Brand and the POINT Foundation between 1968 and 2002.

wholeearth.info iconwholeearth.info

A new documentary called The Age of Audio traces the history and impact of podcasting, exploring the resurgence of audio storytelling in the 21st century. In a clip from the doc in the form of a short, Ben Hammersley tells the story of how he coined the term “podcast.”

I’m Ben Hammersley, and I do many things, but mostly I’m the person who invented the word podcast. And I am very sorry.

I can tell you the story. This was in 2004, and I was a writer for the Guardian newspaper in the UK. And at the time, the newspaper was paper-centric, which meant that all of the deadlines were for the print presses to run. And I’d written this article about this sort of emerging idea of downloadable audio content that was automatically downloaded because of an RSS feed.

I submitted the article on time, but then I got a phone call from my editor about 15 minutes before the presses were due to roll saying, “Hey, that piece is about a sentence short for the shape of the page. We don’t have time to move the page around. Can you just write us another sentence?”

And so I just made up a sentence which says something like, “But what do we call this phenomenon?” And then I made up some silly words. It went out, it went into the article, didn’t think any more of it.

And then about six months later or so, I got an email from the Oxford American Dictionary saying, “Hey, where did you get that word from that was in the article you wrote? It seems to be the first citation of the word ‘podcast.’ Now here we are almost 20 years later, and it became part of the discourse.” I’m totally fine with it now.

(h/t Jason Kottke / Kottke.org)

Older man with glasses and mustache in plaid shirt looking right beside a green iPod-style poster labeled "Age of Audio.

Age of Audio – A documentary about podcasting

Explore the rise of podcasting through intimate conversations with industry pioneers including Marc Maron, Ira Glass, Kevin Smith, and more. A seven-year journey documenting the audio revolution that changed how we tell stories.

aoamovie.com iconaoamovie.com

If you are old enough to have watched Toy Story in theaters back in 1995, you may have noticed that the version streaming on Disney+ today doesn’t quite feel the same.

You see, Toy Story was an entirely digital artifact but it had to be distributed to movie theaters using the technology theaters had at the time—35mm film projectors. Therefore, every frame of the movie was recorded onto film.

Animation Obsessive explains:

Their system was fairly straightforward. Every frame of Toy Story’s negative was exposed, three times, in front of a CRT screen that displayed the movie. “Since all film and video images are composed of combinations of red, green and blue light, the frame is separated into its discrete red, green and blue elements,” noted the studio. Exposures, filtered through each color, were layered to create each frame.

It reportedly took nine hours to print 30 seconds of Toy Story. But it had to be done: it was the only way to screen the film.

The home video version of the movie was mastered from a 35mm print.

And then in 1999, A Bug’s Life became the very first digital-to-digital home video transfer. Pixar devised a method to go from their computers straight to DVD.

In the early 2000s, Disney/Pixar would redo the home video transfer for Toy Story using the same digital mastering technique. “And it wasn’t quite the same movie that viewers had seen in the ‘90s.”

“The colors are vivid and lifelike, [and] not a hint of grain or artifacts can be found,” raved one reviewer. It was a crisp, blazingly bright, digital image now — totally different from the softness, texture and deep, muted warmth of physical film, on which Toy Story was created to be seen.

And then digital transfers became the standard.

Pizza Planet diner with a large retro rocket beside a curved neon-lit entrance at night under a starry sky, cars parked outside.

The ‘Toy Story’ You Remember

Plus: newsbits.

animationobsessive.substack.com iconanimationobsessive.substack.com

Hard to believe that the very first fully computer animated feature film came out 30 years ago. To say that Toy Story was groundbreaking would be an understatement. If you look at the animated feature landscape today, 100% is computer-generated.

In this re-found interview with Steve Jobs exactly a year after the movie premiered in theaters, Jobs talks about a few things, notably how different Silicon Valley and Hollywood were—and still are.

From the Steve Jobs Archive:

In this footage, Steve reveals the long game behind Pixar’s seeming overnight success. With striking clarity, he explains how its business model gives artists and engineers a stake in their creations, and he reflects on what Disney’s hard-won wisdom taught him about focus and discipline. He also talks about the challenge of leading a team so talented that it inverts the usual hierarchy, the incentives that inspire people to stay with the company, and the deeper purpose that unites them all: to tell stories that last and put something of enduring value into the culture.  

Play

And Jobs in his own words:

Well, in this blending of a Hollywood  culture and a Silicon Valley culture, one of the things that we encountered was  that the Hollywood culture and the Silicon Valley culture each used different models of  employee retention. Hollywood uses the stick, which is the contract, and Silicon Valley  uses the carrot, which is the stock option. And we examined both of those in really pretty  great detail, both economically, but also psychologically and culture wise, what kind of  culture do you end up with. And while there’s a lot of reasons to want to lock down your  employees for the duration of a film because, if somebody leaves, you’re at risk, those  same dangers exist in Silicon Valley. During an engineering project, you don’t want to lose people, and yet, they managed to evolve another system than contracts. And we preferred the Silicon Valley model in this case, which basically gives people stock in the company so that we all have the same goal, which is to create shareholder value. But also, it makes us constantly worry about making Pixar the greatest company we can  so that nobody would ever want to leave. 

Large serif headline "Pixar: The Early Days" on white background, small dotted tree logo at bottom-left.

Pixar: The Early Days

A never-before-seen 1996 interview

stevejobsarchive.com iconstevejobsarchive.com

Make no mistake: Democracy in America has been under threat. The Executive branch continues to accrue and abuse power, much of it willingly given up by Congress, and the Supreme Court has largely given deference to this president.

In a beautiful, yet somehow haunting visualization, Alvin Chang for the Pudding went back and analyzed speeches in Congress from 1880 onward to show the growth of mentions about democracy being under threat.

Scroll through the interactive data viz and see the numbers tick up over the years, along with select quotes from speeches.

Chang ends with this reflection:

I grew up in an immigrant family, and I was constantly reminded of how powerful these values are. Sure, my family had some allegiance to their home country. Sure, we were constantly reminded of ways in which the country failed to live up to these ideals. However, I was told that we live in a country that is united not by the color of our skin or the origins of our families, but rather a belief in how humans should live together.

Americans have always argued about what it means to strive toward these democratic ideals. This pursuit of democracy is who we are; it’s who we want to be.

If we stop now, who are we as a people?

(h/t Nathan Yau / FlowingData)

Timeline 1950–2020 of magenta dot clusters rising sharply after 2000, labeled "Threats to democracy" with arrows to 1960s and 2000s.

In pursuit of democracy

Analyzing every mention of ‘democracy’ in the Congressional Record

pudding.cool iconpudding.cool

When I went to design school %#*! years ago, Philip Meggs’ History of Graphic Design was required reading, well, for our graphic design history classes. I remember that nearly all the examples in the book were European men. So I’m glad there’s a new edition coming out that broadens the history to include more.

Cheryl D. Holmes-Miller writing in PRINT Magazine about the forthcoming 7th Edition of Meggs’ History of Graphic Design:

The 7th Edition is a reformation — dismantling the core barriers that have kept many of us from realizing our full potential in this field. It will make a transformative difference for years to come. The next generation of designers will find themselves in the history of graphic design and propel the industry forward.

Holmes-Miller asked the book’s co-editor, Sandra Maxa about the “restructuring of the historical timeline and how this shift might affect educators whose weekly lectures have long relied on the linear storytelling approach.” To which Maxa said:

“To create a new edition that is relevant to students today, we used a more direct writing style and stronger representation of designers from different backgrounds,” she said. “We also advocated for restructuring the new edition around themes instead of chronology to avoid implying a hierarchy that comes with presenting something as ‘the first.’” Maxa continued, “Including diverse voices and practices of graphic design is integral to situating the work of graphic designers today with cultural and social contexts of the past and inviting broader participation and interpretation from readers to construct a shared history of graphic design.”

meggs' in red above large white stacked text reading "history of graphic design" on a black background

New Edition of ‘Meggs’ History of Graphic Design’ Reforms the Canon

The 7th Edition is a reformation. The next generation of designers will find themselves in the history of graphic design and propel the industry forward, writes Cheryl Miller.

printmag.com iconprintmag.com

I suppose there are two types of souvenirs that we can pick up while traveling: mass-manufactured tchotchkes like fridge magnets or snow globes, or local artisan-made trinkets and wares. The latter has come to represent cultures outside of their locales, an opportunity for tourists to take a little bit of their experiences with them home.

Louisa Eunice writing in Design Observer:

The souvenir industry, though vital for many local economies, has long been accused of flattening cultural complexity into digestible clichés, transforming sacred objects into décor, and replacing sustainable materials with cheaper alternatives to meet demand. Yet for countless artisans, participation in that market remains a practical act of endurance: a way to keep culture visible in a world that might otherwise forget it.

So on the flip side, though these souvenirs reduce the cultures of those places to a carved giraffe, sculpted clay bird, or ceremonial mask, I would argue that at least the artifacts can spark conversation.

The fact that a mask can be both a ritual object for the local artisan who made it and a decorative item for the tourist who bought it says more about resilience than dilution. It reveals how objects can inhabit multiple meanings without losing their essence. What we often call “appropriation” may, in these moments, also be adaptation, a negotiation that allows heritage to stay visible, if altered, in the modern world. 

To understand souvenirs this way is to see them not as hollow tokens but as collaborations: between maker and buyer, local and global, art and economy. When tourists view these pieces as design legacies — works that carry labor, history, and symbolism — the exchange becomes more than commercial. It becomes cultural continuity in motion.

Decorative folding fan painted with women in kimono holding flags (Union Jack, Japanese flag), wooden ribs and dangling tassel on blue background

The afterlife of souvenirs: what survives between culture and commerce?

From carved masks to clay birds, the global souvenir trade tells a deeper story of adaptation, resilience, and cultural survival.

designobserver.com icondesignobserver.com

Did you know that Apple made Office before Microsoft made Office? It was called AppleWorks and launched in 1984 for the Apple II. They’d make it for the Mac in 1991 and called it ClarisWorks because Apple spun off a software subsidiary for who knows what reason.

Howard Oakley recently wrote a brief history of AppleWorks and shared some nice visuals. Though I wished he included an image from that original Apple II text-based AppleWorks as well.

AppleWorks screenshot: Certificate of Achievement for Marcia Marks, ornate black border, yellow seal, color palette panel

A brief history of AppleWorks

It took 7 years for it to become available for the Mac, changed names and hands twice, but somehow survived until 2007.

eclecticlight.co iconeclecticlight.co

’Tis the season for online archives. From GQ comes this archive of the work of Virgil Abloh, the multi-hyphenate creative powerhouse who started as an intern at Fendi and rose to found his own streetwear label Off-White, before becoming artistic director of Louis Vuitton’s menswear collection. He had collabs with Nike, IKEA, and artist Jenny Holzer.

I do think my favorite from this archive is his collection of LV bags. I’m used to seeing them in monochromatic colors, not these bright ones.

Inside the Top Secret Virgil Abloh Archive

Inside the Top Secret Virgil Abloh Archive

In the years since the premature death of the former Off-White and Louis Vuitton creative director, a team of archivists has tirelessly catalogued one of the most remarkable private fashion collections ever assembled. We’re revealing it here for the first time.

gq.com icongq.com

In a world where case studies dominate portfolios, explaining the problem and sharing the outcomes, a visuals-only gallery feels old fashioned. But Pentagram has earned the right to compile their own online monograph. It is one of the very few agencies in the world who could pull together an archive like this that features over 2,000 projects spanning their 53-year existence.

Try searches like: album covers, New York City, SNL, and Paula Scher.

*The folks at Pentagram aren’t complete heretics. They have a more traditional case studies section here.

Dark gallery grid of small thumbnails with a centered translucent search box saying "Show me album covers".

Archive — Pentagram

A place where we’ve condensed over 50 years of our design prowess into an immersive exploration. Delve into 2,000+ projects, spanning from 1972 to the present and beyond, all empowered by Machine Learning.

pentagram.com iconpentagram.com

I will say that A-ha’s 1985 hit “Take On Me” and its accompanying video was incredibly influential on me as a kid. Listening to the struggles the band endured and the constant tuning of the song they did is very inspiring. In an episode of Song Exploder, Hrishikesh Hirway interviews Paul Waaktaar-Savoy, who originally wrote the bones of the song as a teenager, about the creative journey the band took to realize the version we know and love.

Hirway:

Okay, so you have spent the whole budget and then this version of the song comes out in 1984, and it flops. How were you able to convince anybody to give you another chance? Or maybe even more so, I’m curious, for your own sake: How were you able to feel like that wasn’t the end of the road for the song? Like, it had its chance, it didn’t happen, and that was that.

Waaktaar-Savoy:

Yeah, that’s the good thing about being young. You don’t feel, (chuckles) you know, you just sort of, brush it off your shoulders, you know. We were a hundred percent confident. We were like, there’s not a doubt in our minds.

…it took some time, you know, it was very touch and go. ‘Cause the, you know, they’ve spent this much money on the half-finished album. Are they gonna pour more money into it and risk losing more money? So, from Norway? Hey, no one comes from Norway and makes it. And so it was a risk for people.

Having gone to England from their native Norway, A-ha released two versions of the song in the UK before it became a hit in the US. With the help of the music video, of course.

A new record exec at the US arm of Warner Bros. took a liking to the band and the album, as Waaktaar-Savoy recalls:

And there was a new guy on the company, Jeff Ayeroff. He fell in love with the, the album and the song. And he had been keeping this one particular idea sort of in the back of his head. There was this art film called Commuter, with animation. So, he was the one who put together that with Steve Barron, who was the director.

And they made the video. And the song slowly climbed the charts to become a number one hit.

Play
Episode 301: A-ha

Episode 301: A-ha

Explore the making of “Take On Me” by A-ha on Song Exploder. Listen as band member Paul Waaktaar-Savoy shares the origins, evolution, and creative process behind their iconic hit. This episode delves into the band’s journey, the song’s chart-topping success, and the inspiration behind the legendary music video. Find full episode audio, streaming links, a transcript, and behind-the-scenes stories from A-ha, the most successful Norwegian pop group of all time. Discover music history and artist insights only on Song Exploder’s in-depth podcast series.

songexploder.net iconsongexploder.net

Designer Davide Mascioli created a book and online archive of over 450 space exploration-related logos from around the world.

It’s a wonderful archive—pretty exhaustive—and includes a smattering of logos from science fiction (though less exhaustive there, since there are so many sci-fi properties).

Here are some of my favorites (graphically)…

NASA 1975 “Worm” logo page with bold typographic mark on light blue background and logotype samples.

South African National Space Agency 2010 page with swirling logo on mint background and mission control display.

Australian Space Agency 2018 page with abstract black circles on pink background and a rocket launch photo.

Firefly Aerospace 2017 page with stylized firefly logo on yellow background and rocket assembly image.

Zero 2 Infinity 2009 page with circular “011∞” logo on yellow background and high-altitude balloon pod photo.

Space Exploration Logo Archive

Space Exploration Logo Archive

S.E.L.A. is an archive of logos related to the world of Space Exploration. The collection spans more than 80 years of works and includes the most iconic and noteworthy logos distributed in seven chapters, starting with the best known up to the raw & rare ones.

spaceexplorationlogoarchive.webflow.io iconspaceexplorationlogoarchive.webflow.io

A former colleague of mine, designer Evan Sornstein wrote a wonderful piece on LinkedIn applying Buddhist principles to design.

Buddhism begins with the recognition that life is marked by impermanence, suffering, and non-self. These aren’t abstract doctrines — they are observations about how the world actually works. Over centuries, these ideas contributed to Japanese aesthetics: wabi-sabi (imperfection), ma (meaningful emptiness), yo no bi (beauty in usefulness), the humility of the shokunin, and the care of omotenashi. What emerges is not a set of rules, but an extraordinary perspective: beauty is inseparable from impermanence; usefulness is inseparable from dignity; care is inseparable from design. In an age when our digital products too often prioritize stickiness and metrics over humanity, these ideas offer a different path. They remind us that design is not about control or cleverness — it’s about connection, trust, and care.

The following eight principles aren’t new “methods” or “laws,” but reflections of this lineage, reframed for product design — though they apply to nearly any creative practice. They are invitations to design with the same attention, humility, and compassion that Buddhism and Japanese aesthetics have carried for centuries.

Designing Emptiness

Designing Emptiness

What Buddhism and Japanese aesthetics teach us about space, meaning, and care in UX It’s been about two years since I first realized I wanted to write this. Looking back, I’ve been on a quiet path for nearly a decade — unknowingly becoming a Buddhist.

linkedin.com iconlinkedin.com

For as long as I can remember, I’d always loved magazines. Print magazines aren’t as trendy these days, but back in the day, I probably had at least a dozen magazine subscriptions. My favorites—naturally—were always the ones with great editorial design, art direction, and photography. Classics like Wired, Interview, Harper’s Bazaar, and Rolling Stone. And, of course, Colors.

The New York Times Magazine lists the top 25 magazine covers of all time. Their list includes classics like George Lois’s cover for Esquire posing Muhammad Ali as Saint Sebastian, the black on black post-9/11 cover for The New Yorker by Art Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly, and Annie Leibovitz’s photo of a clothed Yoko Ono and nude John Lennon for Rolling Stone.

The 25 Most Influential Magazine Covers of All Time

The 25 Most Influential Magazine Covers of All Time

(Gift link) Four editors, a creative director and a visual artist met to debate and discuss the best of print media — and its enduring legacy.

nytimes.com iconnytimes.com

Ian Dean, writing for Creative Bloq, revisits the impact the original TRON movie had on visual effects and the design industry. The film was not nominated for an Oscar for visual effects as the Academy’s members claimed that “using computers was ‘cheating.’” Little did they know it was only the beginning of a revolution.

More than four decades later, TRON still feels like a moment the film industry stopped and changed direction, just as it had done years earlier when Oz was colourised and Mary Poppins danced with animated animals.

Dean asks, now what about AI-powered visual effects? Runway and Sora are only the beginning.

The TRON Oscar snub that predicted today’s AI in filmmaking

The TRON Oscar snub that predicted today’s AI in filmmaking

What we can learn from the 1982 film’s frosty reception.

creativebloq.com iconcreativebloq.com

If you’ve ever wondered why every version of Hokusai’s “The Great Wave off Kanagawa” feels just a little bit different, this video from the British Museum is a gem. It dives into the subtle variations across 111 known prints and shows how art, time, and technique all leave their mark.

Capucine Korenberg from the British Museum spent over 50 hours just staring at different versions of the print, joking “This is about the same amount of time you would spend brushing your teeth over two years. So, next time you brush your teeth just think of me looking at The Great Wave.”

Hokusai’s 'The Great Wave' (and the differences between all 111 of them)

Did you know there are 113 identified copies of Hokusai's The Great Wave. I know the title says 111, but scientist Capucine Korenberg found another 2 after completing her research. What research was that? Finding every print of The Great Wave around the world and then sequencing them, to find out when they were created during the life cycle of the woodblocks they were printed from.

youtube.com iconyoutube.com

Ah, this brings back memories! I spent so much time in MacPaint working with these patterns when I was young. Paul Smith faithfully recreates them:

I was working on something and thought it would be fun to use one of the classic Mac black-and-white patterns in the project. I’m talking about the original 8×8-pixel ones that were in the original Control Panel for setting the desktop background and in MacPaint as fill patterns.

I figured there’d must be clean, pixel-perfect GIFs or PNGs of them somewhere on the web. And perhaps there are, but after poking around a bit, I ran out of energy for that, but by then had a head of steam for extracting the patterns en masse from the original source, somehow. Then I could produce whatever format I needed for them.

preview-1757693571067.png

Classic 8×8-pixel B&W Mac patterns

TL;DR: I made a website for the original classic Mac patterns I was working on something and thought it would be fun to use one of the classic Mac black-and-white patterns in the project. I'm talking about the original 8×8-pixel ones that were in the...

pauladamsmith.com iconpauladamsmith.com

Brad Frost, of atomic design fame, wrote a history of themeable UIs as part of a deep dive into design tokens. He writes, “Design tokens may be the latest incarnation, but software creators have been creating themeable user interfaces for quite a long time!”

About Mario and Luigi from Super Mario Bros.:

It’s wild that two of the most iconic characters in the history of pop culture — red-clad Mario and green-clad Luigi — are themeable UI elements born from pragmatic ingenuity to overcome technological challenges. Freaking amazing.

The History of Themeable User Interfaces

The History of Themeable User Interfaces

A full-ish history of user interfaces that can be themed to meet the opportunities and constraints of the time

bradfrost.com iconbradfrost.com

Here’s a fun project from Étienne Fortier-Dubois. It is both a timeline of tech innovations throughout history and a family tree. For example, the invention of the wheel led to chariots, or the ancestors of the bulletin board system were the home computer and the modem. From the about page:

The historical tech tree is a project by Étienne Fortier-Dubois to visualize the entire history of technologies, inventions, and (some) discoveries, from prehistory to today. Unlike other visualizations of the sort, the tree emphasizes the connections between technologies: prerequisites, improvements, inspirations, and so on.

These connections allow viewers to understand how technologies came about, at least to some degree, thus revealing the entire history in more detail than a simple timeline, and with more breadth than most historical narratives. The goal is not to predict future technology, except in the weak sense that knowing history can help form a better model of the world. Rather, the point of the tree is to create an easy way to explore the history of technology, discover unexpected patterns and connections, and generally make the complexity of modern tech feel less daunting.

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Historical Tech Tree

Interactive visualization of technological history

historicaltechtree.com iconhistoricaltechtree.com

The designer of the iconic “007” logo from the James Bond movies has died. Joe Caroff was 103. Jeré Longman, writing for The New York Times:

For the first Bond movie, “Dr. No” (1962), Mr. Caroff was hired to create a logo for the letterhead of a publicity release. He began working with the idea that as a secret agent, James Bond had a license to kill (as designated by the numerals “00”), but Mr. Caroff did not find Bond’s compact Walther PPK pistol to be visually appealing.

As he sketched the numerals 007, he drew penciled lines above and below to guide him and noticed that the upper guideline resembled an elongated barrel of a pistol extending from the seven.

He refined his drawing and added a trigger, fashioning a mood of intrigue and espionage and crafting one of the most globally recognized symbols in cinematic history. With some modifications, the logo has been used for 25 official Bond films and endless merchandising.

John Gruber of Daring Fireball also wrote a piece about Caroff:

Caroff had a remarkably accomplished career. He created iconic posters for dozens of terrific films across a slew of genres. The fact that he created the 007 logo but only earned $300 from it is more like a curious footnote than anything.

Joe Caroff, Who Gave James Bond His Signature 007 Logo, Dies at 103

Joe Caroff, Who Gave James Bond His Signature 007 Logo, Dies at 103

(Gift link) A quiet giant in graphic design, he created posters for hundreds of movies, including “West Side Story” and “A Hard Day’s Night.” But his work was often unsigned.

nytimes.com iconnytimes.com

I grew up on MTV and I’m surprised that my Gen Z kids don’t watch music videos. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Rob Schwartz, writing in PRINT Magazine:

…the network launched the iconic “I Want My MTV” ad campaign. Created by ad legend George Lois, the campaign featured the world’s biggest rock stars literally demanding MTV. At the time, this was unheard of. Unlike today, rock stars would never sell out to do ads. But here you had the biggest stars: Mick Jagger, David Bowie, Pete Townshend, the Police…and rising star Madonna, all shouting the same line in different executions: ‘I want my MTV!” The campaign was a stroke of genius. It mobilized viewers to call up their cable providers and shout over the phone: “I want my MTV!” In due time, MTV was on damn-near every cable box and damn-near every young person’s TV.

Play
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The MTV Effect

Rob Schwartz on the unconventional genius of music + TV.

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As a child of immigrant parents, I grew up learning English from watching PBS, Sesame Street, specifically. But there were other favorites like 3-2-1 Contact, The Electric Company, and of course, Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood. The logo, with its head looking like a P was seared into my developing brain.

So I’m incredibly saddened to hear that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the government-funded entity behind PBS and NPR, will cease operations on September 30, 2025, because of a recent bill passed by the Republican-controlled Congress and signed into law by President Trump.

While PBS and NPR won’t disappear, it will be harder for those networks to stay afloat, now solely dependent on donations.

Lilly Smith, writing for Fast Company:

More than 70% of CPB’s annual federal appropriation goes directly to more than 1,500 local public media stations, according to a web page of its financials. This loss in funding could force local stations, especially in rural areas, to shut down, according to the CPB. Local member stations are independent and locally owned and operated, according to NPR. As a public-private partnership, local PBS stations get about 15% of their revenue from federal funding.

She reached out to Tom Geismar, who redesigned the PBS logo in 1984—the original was by Herb Lubalin and Ernie Smith in 1971. He had this perspective:

There is an ironic tie-in between the government decision to cut off all funding to public television and public radio, and what prompted the redesign of the PBS logo back in the early 1980s.

That was also a difficult time, financially, for the Public Broadcasting Service, and especially the stations in more remote regions of the country. Much of the public equated PBS with the major television networks CBS, NBC and ABC, and presumed that, like those major institutions, PBS was the parent of and significant funder for all the local public television stations throughout the country. But, in fact, the reality is somewhat the opposite. Although PBS local affiliates received a portion of funding from the federal government, it is the individual stations that have the responsibility to do public fund raising, and PBS, in a sense, works for them.

Because of this confusion, the PBS leadership felt that their existing logo (a famous design by by Herb Lubalin) needed to be more than just the classic 3-initials mark, something more evocative of a public-benefit system serving all people. Thus the “everyone” mark was born.

Geismar ends with, “And now, once again, with federal government funding stopped, it is the stations in the less populous regions who will suffer the most.”

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The designer behind the iconic 'everyman' PBS logo sees the irony in its demise

Tom Geismar designed the logo to represent the everyman. Now, he says, it’s those people who will suffer the most from the loss of public broadcast services.

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Jay Hoffman, writing in his excellent The History of the Web website, reflects on Kevin Kelly’s 2005 Wired piece that celebrated the explosive growth of blogging—50 million blogs, one created every two seconds—and predicted a future powered by open participation and user-created content. Kelly was right about the power of audiences becoming creators, but he missed the crucial detail: 2005 would mark the peak of that open web participation before everyone moved into centralized platforms.

There are still a lot of blogs, 600 million by some accounts. But they have been supplanted over the years by social media networks. Commerce on the web has consolidated among fewer and fewer sites. Open source continues to be a major backbone to web technologies, but it is underfunded and powered almost entirely by the generosity of its contributors. Open API’s barely exist. Forums and comment sections are finding it harder and harder to beat back the spam. Users still participate in the web each and every day, but it increasingly feels like they do so in spite of the largest web platforms and sites, not because of them.

My blog—this website—is a direct response to the consolidation. This site and its content are owned and operated by me and not stuck behind a login or paywall to be monetized by Meta, Medium, Substack, or Elon Musk. That is the open web.

Hoffman goes on to say, “The web was created for participation, by its nature and by its design. It can’t be bottled up long.” He concludes with:

Independent journalists who create unique and authentic connections with their readers are now possible. Open social protocols that experts truly struggle to understand, is being powered by a community that talks to each other.

The web is just people. Lots of people, connected across global networks. In 2005, it was the audience that made the web. In 2025, it will be the audience again.

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We Are Still the Web

Twenty years ago, Kevin Kelly wrote an absolutely seminal piece for Wired. This week is a great opportunity to look back at it.

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