Erin Malone, the user experience designer behind Kodak’s first website, looks back on the early web with the story of how she and a colleague built the company’s inaugural homepage in 1994, before most of marketing even knew what the web was.
Fresh out of grad school and self-taught in HTML (as everyone was at that time), Malone helped create a pioneering site that today lives on in the Wayback Machine. Her testimonial highlights just how radical those early experiments were, and why preserving them matters.
“Another person in the design group that I worked in…suggested, ‘Why don’t we build a website for Kodak?’ And since I had done a website, I was like, sure, let’s do it.
Erin Malone, interaction designer
And we asked our boss if that was OK. And he said, ‘Yes,’ because I don’t think he really knew what we were talking about.”
When I got out of grad school, I started working at Kodak. And in 1994, Mosaic came out. I had just taught myself HTML and another person in the design group that I worked in, his name was Frank Marino, suggested, “Why don't we build a website for Kodak?”
And since I had done a website, I was like, sure, let's do it.
And we asked our boss if that was OK. And he said, yes, because I don't think he really knew what we were talking about. And, you know, marketing wasn't really into the web yet. And they didn't have any objections.
So we built a website that was essentially a big image map with four images coming out of the center. And I think each one linked to, I don't know, a white paper or a page with just some text on it.
We built that in, I think,'94. I think what the Wayback Machine has is dated from 1996, but it's the same image, the same homepage. And it was pretty radical at the time.
Can we please see what Kodak’s first website from 1994 looked like?
Never mind. I should have watched that video.