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Retro Design
What’s old is new again?
Remember the days of pixelated graphics and eye-popping color schemes?
They’re back. Retro web design from the internet’s earliest days, like it or not, with a modern twist.
I wish I’d known that when I hand-coded my first website in 1998. It featured a GIF door that opened and closed, a textured background and Bauhaus fonts.
That trend is back, and it’s everywhere.
Bold, sometimes clashing, vibrant colors. Pixelated graphics straight out of a vintage video game. Chunky, geometric fonts. Windows 98-style pop-ups. Animated, flashing GIFs (remember dancing-baby.gif?).
A return to tactility, bare-bone aesthetics and basic HTML, using tables and frames, like on my first website.
This design approach is now used as a branding tool because there’s real psychology at play. Retro elements trigger something that feels familiar and comfortable with modern functionality.
