Let’s all meet up in the Y2K ⌘I Get Info
Let’s all meet up in the Y2K
2026-08-06
5 mins read
#design
#history
#london
#macintosh
#photo
#web
2026-08-06
5 mins read<br>true
Back in 2024 I posted a few of these on Twitter (thread reader) after digging out old photos from the dot-com boom. I was working in London at a digital agency called Blueberry. Please take a seat for peak translucent plastic frutiger aero aesthetic, long before the term was coined, and some period flashbacks if you were working on the web at this time.
I’d come from graphic design agency Form, but wanted somewhere to do bigger web projects with other likeminded souls. Blueberry was more like a social club than a job, and we still shipped a lot of work for clients like Laura Ashley, Ben & Jerry’s, Ted Baker, The Times, Boo.com, Snow24, and many more I forget. Everything I produced was hand-coded in HomeSite: HTML, JS, CSS. This was before browser CSS support came of age, so it was all table layouts with single pixel spacer gifs: good times!
If you’d like to know how crazy those days were: at one point they asked me to work a weekend and I already had plans, so they asked what it would take. I wanted a classic FIAT 500, so I named the price of the car: multiple thousands of pounds. The management said yes, it was their only option. So that’s what I got paid for a weekend building a site nobody else could get done.
Home & Away
That’s me on the left of the first shot, curling my bottom lip when I’m deep in thought as I still do today. I must be 23 or 24 years of age. HomeSite undoubtedly open somewhere in Windows. The reindeer on my monitor pooped little brown jelly beans when you pressed down on its rear end, a gift from my girlfriend at the time.
On the desk facing the camera, my good friend Morgan Gibbons’ (Creative Artworker extraordinaire) Graphite Power Mac G4 tower, Apple CRT, translucent Pro Keyboard and Mouse, Sony headphones, promotional postcards: Phwoar! G4, some Renault Clio car porn, and of course a nice cup of tea. His desktop wallpaper is Quake III, which we all used to play over the LAN “…in your face!”. There’s an official Dreamcast magazine in the corner featuring Crazy Taxi, which dates this photo to March 2000. I also spy a Bowser wrist rest in front of the keyboard, an Apple mouse mat with rainbow logo, and an Iomega Zip drive just to its right.
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Bubblegum iMacs were everywhere on the floor. One sat dark among paper trays; another was on with Aqua-era desktop art and a purple translucent mouse.
Later I moved upstairs onto a secret project and upgraded to a Sony VAIO PCG-Z600RE laptop, a Palm Vx, and a Sony Ericsson phone. And of course I had a test iMac of my own. We can see my being a FIAT fan boy because by this point I was driving the car I bought with a weekend’s earnings. There’s also a NGPC (Neo Geo Pocket Color) in its box nestled amongst the mess of my desk, and a promo copy of Dreamcast game Crazy Taxi for me to take home.
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For some reason I’m sat at somebody else’s desk, sizing up the height and fit of the chair. Diesel jeans and jumper, Deliverance food box on the partition (decades before Deliveroo, Just Eat, Uber Eats, etc). I guess we must have been working late one night.
After that I think I complained and got moved downstairs again, sitting next to the legend that is Shaun Jackson, who I am still in touch with. IIRC I’m helping him out with a tricky bit of page layout!
Getting Things Done
The open plan floor, with offices at either end and a kitchen half way down, was all curved purple desks and CRT monitors. A hive of activity and house music or drum’n’bass. I have fond memories of BT (Movement in Still Life), various Deep Dish compilations (Yoshiesque) and the back catalogue Omni Trio being played regularly, at least by me.
Closer in: two computers per-desk, magazines and CD-ROMs on the partition, a MiniDisc player!
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Everybody was always moving around as they worked on different projects. I’m pretty sure this is another photo from Morgan’s desk when it was one island away from his first desk. The PlayStation 2 and Phwoar! G4 are the giveaway. I’m sure somebody will be able to date that fashion magazine.
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Reception
The entrance from the corridor: frosted Blueberry doors, glass wall looking into the bar stools, Christmas lights still up in the atrium.
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Inside, reception had chrome stools and a bar-height counter. Visitors could surf the web sat in dentist chairs with iMacs on swing arms. Naturally!
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Backroom
There was servers cabinet in most rooms, and we had a dedicated server room: rackmount drives, a switch with a bird’s...