While rooting around the studio archives for work to feature in our design portfolio (still a work in progress), came across this piece that I developed back in 1995 for the Toronto Metro Works web site. Based on the style that I had used for my personal portfolio (which was in turn inspired by Apple‘s old e-world interface), the illustration featured various locations and sections on the site. This was developed as part of a freelance gig for Hoffman & Associates, a leading Canadian multimedia company of the day, and served as my introduction to the Internets. When I was being ‘short-listed’ for the job, I was asked if I knew HTML (didn’t even know what it was) and if I had ever ‘surfed’ on this thing they referred to as the “World Wide Web” (I hadn’t). It was in the development of this map that I became enamored with the Web, a love affair that’s been ongoing now for more than a decade.
Amusing story about this illustration – when it was added to the Metro Web Site, it was animated using Shockwave (a Director based precursor to Flash – which in those days was referred to as ‘Future Splash‘ – which had just hit the scene, put out by a smallish Florida software company). It was cool and all, but it required the Shockwave plug-in to run, and this plug-in wasn’t included with the browser of the day – Netscape. When I wanted to view the animation of my work, I had to download the plug-in via modem (about an hour and fifteen minutes), find the appropriate folder and hand-install it, restart my trusty Mac, and then find the web page all over again. Total elapsed time – almost two hours. Just to see a bunch of logos on trucks and characters zip around the screen. I’d guess that when the new site was launched, I was among the few to actually take the time to view this spiffy animation. You kids do not know how lucky you have it.
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