Yesterday, Joshua Topolsky’s new brain child, The Outline launched to the world. You’re likely familiar with Topolsky’s work, he was at Engadget prior to co-founding The Verge and then had a short stint at Bloomberg. Oh and he’s also made some appearances on Jimmy Fallon. Anyway, his new site launched yesterday so I took a second to check it out.
According to Topolsky’s welcome post, The Outline is “a new kind of publication for a new kind of human.” I’m not exactly sure what that means, but let’s roll with it for now.
Immediately after visiting the site, I felt a great amount of 90s nostalgia wash over me and it seems I’m not alone with that sentiment. Some tweets below (including one from yours truly).
Anyone feel like the @outline site is like a 90s design built with today’s technologies? And I don’t mean that in a bad way.
— Jeff Weisbein (@jeffweisbein) December 5, 2016
The Outline makes me feel like the 90s threw up on my iPad. Be interesting to see if Snapchat meets news really works. pic.twitter.com/dPZK381TV4
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) December 5, 2016
Oh man, this is like Raygun or Wired magazine in the 90s when nobody could read anything “The Outline” https://t.co/DzWD58Rlve
— Les Orchard ❄️☃🎄🔥 (@lmorchard) December 6, 2016
This @outline design puts me off reading any articles. Retro 90s? https://t.co/FN7rLIe5bt A site about the future with no future.
— manni (@manniKraemer) December 6, 2016
@outline looks like a 90s @trapperkeeper optimized for mobile. which is pretty cool
— Ben Muessig (@benmuessig) December 5, 2016
Reactions to the very 90s-esque design seem mixed, I’m going to guess it’ll prove very popular with the site’s ideal demographic (millennials aka me) who it will remind of fun and stress-free times in their lives.