The Past Reclamation Project, Part I

Web Review Magazine Covers and
Headline Graphics 1995-1998

The first headline graphic Bob created for
Web Review appeared in September 1995.
An example of the original Web
Review design, circa 1995.
The transitional design, circa 1996.
The redesign, circa 1997. Once upon a time there was an online magazine called Web Review. It was aimed at a consumer audience which, at the time it started in July of 1995, didn't exist. In fact, Mosaic, the first graphical Web browser, was only a couple years old and the Web itself was in its infancy.

Web Review was created by Songline Studios, an affiliate of O'Reilly and Associates, a geek-book publisher located an hour or two (depending on traffic) north of San Francisco. Songline was started with seed money from the sale of O'Reilly's Global Network Navigator (GNN for short, one of the first portal sites on the Web) to America Online. Songline was an experiment, exploring the possibilities of that new technology called the World Wide Web. Songline created content management systems, Web-based training, recommendation systems, online magazine publishing and social interactive entertainment well before anybody had coined any of those terms.

In September of 1995, I went to work for Songline as the art director for Web Review Magazine. 1995 doesn't seem that long ago, but the Web of '95 bears little resemblance to the Web of today. It was the early days of the Web, well before it hit the consciousness of the masses, and we were pushing the boundaries as far as we could go. Those were the days when a "high-speed" connection was a 9600 baud dial up modem. Only the most modern of browsers allowed the use of JPEG images and the "align" parameter was the most complex page formatting tool available (tables and CSS were still years away). Netscape was the dominant browser, created by graduates from the Mosaic team at the University of Illinois, and it seemed like it was in beta forever. We downloaded each dot release like it was Christmas. Microsoft was just waking up to the Web and that fall they rushed out their first version of Internet Explorer, touching off the browser wars which vaulted Web technology forward in the following years.

Web Review's original torn paper with parchment background was designed by Jennifer Neiderst, and for the first year or so I worked within the parameters she had established. Later on, I had the opportunity to redesign the look of Web Review, and though I was never quite satisfied with it, I was able to give it a little more of a modern look reminiscent of today's blog-style news sites.

In May of 1996 Web Review gave up trying to make a go of it and suspended publication, having lasted only eight months. During that summer, Managing Editor Richard Koman and I worked to revamp the magazine from a consumer-oriented publication to a reference resource for Web developers. In 1996, people were just starting to pay attention to the Web and figure out what it might be good for. Designers and developers had a lot of catching up to do and there was precious little in the way of information to help. Web Review helped fill that void, and with funding from Miller Freeman, a print magazine publisher that wanted to partner with an online resource, Web Review re-launched in September of 1996 and enjoyed another five years of life.

Web Review is gone now, and mostly forgotten except by the Web old-timers that it touched. I worked there until 1998, but before moving on to other things, I left behind a myriad of graphics created in those early days, most that have been lost to the cyber-ether. To help keep alive Web Review's small part in the history of the Web and my participation in it, I'm presenting a variety of graphics culled from my archives (the ones I could find anyway). They're an interesting look back to the world of the mid to late '90s and the early days of the Web we all know so well today.

Bob Schmitt
October 2008

Web Review Magazine Covers 1995-1998 >>
Web Review Magazine Article Heads - 1995 >>
Web Review Magazine Article Heads - 1996 >>
Web Review Magazine Article Heads - 1997 >>

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