I was one of the UX designers for eBay in 1997-98, just before the IPO. I was working on what would become the Gallery view.
When Meg Whitman took over, I presented the work we had done so far. I was pretty wet behind the ears at the time, and I was enamored with the latest shiny objects on the Web. eBay, by way of contrast, had a look that could be charitably described as "homespun." I was busy polishing things up, tightening the color palette, improving typography (as much as one could in 1998), reducing clutter, and using what I thought of as killer JavaScript flourishes to really blow people away with the Gallery View. I may have even tried to introduce some Flash at the time, I'm not sure.
What I do remember was the way Meg schooled me when I came in to present my slick new state-of-the-art Gallery. I don't remember her exact words, but she told me that I was building something that simply wasn't eBay. She explained to me that the success of eBay came from the sellers who thought of eBay not as a company, but as their own corner of the Web that belonged to them. The audience for eBay, she explained, was mom and pop types, people who were comfortable with garage sales and flea markets, and who had built a level of trust with eBay based on what they saw as a brand that shared their down-home values.
eBay's biggest competitor at the time was Yahoo! Auctions, and eBay was killing them, because people thought of Yahoo! as a faceless, monolithic corporation, and couldn't feel a sense of ownership about placing their auctions there. I learned a valuable lesson about the importance of being appropriate to your audience, and not always going for the latest, slickest design.
I've always liked the fact that their logo kept that original homespun feel. The site has slowly evolved over the years, and their audience surely has as well. It's arguable whether eBay still has the folksy appeal it had in the 1990s. The new logo represents a very authentic reflection of the change to the brand, and the company itself. The nostalgic side of me would love to see the old logo and the old brand stick around forever, but if I'm being honest, this is probably the most appropriate thing they could have done. It's a genuine expression of the brand's history and personality. You can't say much better for a logo than that.
If they had kept the late 90s or early 2000s aesthetic, then most people would've assumed that it was sti one of those hobby projects more focused on a nostalgic (but not necessarily better in any actual way) technological aesthetic that certain tech people get really attached to, and not something that was meant for serious use and to be pleasant to use in the modern decade for people who prefer modern interface paradigms. Having a clean and well-designed website that's nice to look at and doesn't feel horribly outdated is a good move in my opinion — to me, it signaled that the project really has shifted its mentality and goals in a substantial way and is now looking towards the future instead of the past. As soon as I saw the new website design, I got excited because it confirmed for me that their mentality has changed and that this could be something that could really go somewhere.
Maybe you've learned to associate a nicely designed website that's pleasant to look at with short lived projects that are worth avoiding, but I think that's more your problem:
Maybe you should realize that most new things don't last very long and so of course websites that are designed in a new and modern way will often be for projects that don't live very long simply because new projects are more likely to use a modern website design, and they are also likely for unrelated reasons to only live a short time.
And that these exact same pressures and considerations would have applied back in the 2000s or 1990s, such that back in those days oldheads might have looked at something with a 2000s or 1990s design and thought that was clear evidence that it wouldn't last very long, because most new projects made back then would have been made with contemporary design styles, and would have also not lasted very long simply because they were new, same as in the modern day.
And that your association of long-lived products with 1990s and 2000s design aesthetics might simply be survivor bias: most long-lived software projects today 1st started in the 90s or early 2000s, at the very least, because that's just the first set of decades that are long enough ago for projects that were started then and still survived today to be considered long-lived. And so, of course, most long-lived projects you are familiar with in the current decade will have aesthetics from decades ago, because that's simply how longevity works. And so you've learned to associate longevity with an old aesthetic, but there's nothing really about the aesthetic that talks about or portrays a mentality that makes projects live longer. It's simply that longer-lived projects will be from an older era of aesthetics. But there were plenty of projects that were designed with 1990s and 2000s aesthetic sensibilities (and whatever magical philosophy you attribute underneath those) that didn't survive long at all, just the same as projects that were designed with modern sensibilities that don't last long, you're just not aware of them because they didn't last and so they didn't show up in your sample.
It's odd how right after that era the design stuff we're getting nostalgic about was derided more often than not. Is that something you remember as well? It's not that it was pointed out as being terrible and nasty like, let's say Geocities or MySpace type pages, but I know there was a drastic shift and unlike most trends it hasn't seemed to loop back on the internet of all places where things seem to cycle back into popularity faster than something like fashion? Maybe that's my personal perception but it feels at least somewhat correct.
> it was sort of a thin veneer atop good old raw plain fast HTML
Yes, I loved that too! It felt like you actually had a handle on everything your website was doing and was comprised of. There wasn't anything involve with it that you just installed and assumed would work. Each decision and technology was something you knew inside and out and employed specifically.
Things these days are crazy, eh? Maybe it's a bigger combination of that part of it plus the fact that it looked the way that I described that creates the fuzzy feelings? Well, if I ever get around to doing what I said above I'll have some sort of answer, haha.
We used to present our designer with a particular webshop, when he asked what sites we frequently used and enjoyed. That site had made one change to their layout in 12 years, they added round corners. That site was easy to navigate, everything was a simple as you can imaging, no weird icons, just text that said: "In stock/out of stock". The thing is, the site looked old, and dated, so everything good was dismissed along with the styling.
Ah, you're right - actually I just realised I clicked through to some of the links which have a completely different design - 2015 link for instance. Main site isn't 90s at all. Actually the design aesthetic I'm talking about might be more early 00s anyway as in the sibling comment.
Or: we as users can wish for the days of 90's web design and bring it back! The main content was so much more up front. Forms, buttons, and general layout were all the same.
And Progressive Enhancement has it that our bells and whistles gracefully degrade back to from whence they came.
I've always wondered, what's the best looking website of the 1990s? Was there anything that people would deem as "good" as some of today's top designs?
I feel like there had to be at least someone with a very refined sense of aesthetic making awesome websites back then.
This. There is something timeless about the '90s internet. Personal websites were invitations to visit someone's digital home and have a look around. The designs were quirky and personal, not standardized and sleek.
There's a certain charm from the early 90's that's been lost with all these new design trends.
I personally think that it has something to do with simplicity indicating that you are dealing with an individual. Not a 'faceless' company. Hence the charm.
In the 90's, you were almost always interacting with a site designed by an individual. Think GeoCities/AngelFire - so this was always a given. Now much less so.
The website design itself is very similar to how other ecommerce sites used to be 20 years ago, at least in my part of the world. Unfortunately we seem to have lost a lot of the simplicity over the years.
The web of the late 90s immediately followed Windows 95 and the gaudy design of interactive CDs trend. The aesthetic of the time lent towards the skeumorphic and into the vividness and richness of colourful graphics, animations and non-grid layouts. There was a novelty-effect driving this trend. GUIs and colour displays were still quite new. And tools like Macromedia Director were only just unlocking those kinds of bespoke GUIs. The web was trying to recreate that feel with a more limited toolset.
We’ve now pivoted back towards simplicity and boxy designs being perceived as more professional. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that simple designs are inherently better. It’s more true that the current trend was a reaction to early web design. And that pivot became reinforced by the technology changes like CSS features and the death of Flash.
When Meg Whitman took over, I presented the work we had done so far. I was pretty wet behind the ears at the time, and I was enamored with the latest shiny objects on the Web. eBay, by way of contrast, had a look that could be charitably described as "homespun." I was busy polishing things up, tightening the color palette, improving typography (as much as one could in 1998), reducing clutter, and using what I thought of as killer JavaScript flourishes to really blow people away with the Gallery View. I may have even tried to introduce some Flash at the time, I'm not sure.
What I do remember was the way Meg schooled me when I came in to present my slick new state-of-the-art Gallery. I don't remember her exact words, but she told me that I was building something that simply wasn't eBay. She explained to me that the success of eBay came from the sellers who thought of eBay not as a company, but as their own corner of the Web that belonged to them. The audience for eBay, she explained, was mom and pop types, people who were comfortable with garage sales and flea markets, and who had built a level of trust with eBay based on what they saw as a brand that shared their down-home values. eBay's biggest competitor at the time was Yahoo! Auctions, and eBay was killing them, because people thought of Yahoo! as a faceless, monolithic corporation, and couldn't feel a sense of ownership about placing their auctions there. I learned a valuable lesson about the importance of being appropriate to your audience, and not always going for the latest, slickest design.
I've always liked the fact that their logo kept that original homespun feel. The site has slowly evolved over the years, and their audience surely has as well. It's arguable whether eBay still has the folksy appeal it had in the 1990s. The new logo represents a very authentic reflection of the change to the brand, and the company itself. The nostalgic side of me would love to see the old logo and the old brand stick around forever, but if I'm being honest, this is probably the most appropriate thing they could have done. It's a genuine expression of the brand's history and personality. You can't say much better for a logo than that.
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