First up, it’s really nice to be able to show a site where all the graphics exist in the archived version, and the broken image is in the new site.
What is most striking about the Purves and Purves site of 1996 is the sheer minimalism.
The entirity of the homepage’s text is “Mini. Catalogue. Welcome.” It seems fitting that their first steps into web design has such caveman speak. And just look at the product pages…
The retina burning bright colours and lack of words suggest that their site was marketed at 3 year olds.
That said, today I was reading a (boring as hell) book about internationalising shopping sites with translation modules. Well, perhaps Purves & Purves discovered a much simpler method: just don’t use any words so that no translation is needed.
(Readers interested in Purves may like to know we have already featured the website of Peter Stringfellow somewhere in the archive.)
