Get Back To The 90s: amazing web design concepts and ideas

4 min readMay 18, 2019

I’m not ashamed to admit that, but Twitter is the place where I usually find the best ideas for blog posts.

Today it’s the web design in the late 90s.

I was a very young kid at that moment, but I do remember the websites we had access to via dial-up connection back then.

What I actually like about this time is there were no rules for web design. Everyone could (and would) do whatever they decided on. Bright colors, some irrational hierarchy, and lots of things that today would be called “bad web design” — everything was there.

The 90s were cool. And more importantly, extremely unique.

I choose the websites I found the most amazing in my taste, but you can browse many more in the gallery if you are interested.

1. White House

Just look at this. I remember we also had CDs with educational materials. They would look exactly the same!

To be honest, I do not see anything bad about it.

It’s cluttered and lacks structure, yes. You have no idea what’s going on, but this is a website. And it belongs to White House!

2. LinkedIn

The website is dated to 2004. Yet, the concept has some of the 90s’ trends. A lot of tiny text on the page, links, and boxes.

Can you mistake it for the first one?

3. GAP

The GAP’s 1996’s concept looks surprisingly up-to-date. It’s clean and organized (in comparison with most websites of that time).

The only thing that makes us doubt is a huge label of the company running the web server and fonts.

4. The Disney Store

The Disney Store website is a classic example!

However, can you mistake it for LinkeIn or The White House? I doubt that.

To be honest, the website serves the needs. The only issue is there’s no search bar anywhere around.

5. McDonalds

That’s the winner. McDonalds’ version of the website looks like a free game (made by indies) you would play with the flash player in the browser today.

Ronald here, is, actually, a great example and the sign of future chat-bots appearing out of the right lower corner and asking if you have questions and whether they can help you!

6. Cool Site of the Day

I can’t really say for sure what’s the purpose of this place but looks more than satisfying.

The one who would let me know what’s this about and what was the purpose of this website should get a prize.

For now, I know that I can get to Disney from this website, and that’s not that bad after all.

7. Xbox

I sneaked another 2004 concept, but this Xbox website looks better than ever. It’s possible to see that there are some real design ideas come to people’s mind, but it still has the beauty of the 90s’ chaos.