In the twenty-four years since State Library Victoria began collecting online publishing, we have struck many long-term relationships with events. One of the most enduring The Melbourne Fringe Festival. The Festival offers an experience of new and innovative culture and performance and, since the 1980s has long settled into essential status in the calendar. We first collected its website in 1999 and it’s worth a look today.

Home page of the 1999 Melbourne Fringe Festival Website
Home page of the 1999 Melbourne Fringe Festival Website

The first thing you might notice is how spread out the landing page is. If you click through the site you’ll see that a tiny text menu on the left column is barely noticeable. We’re spoiled by advances in technology: this page, like all of them from the era, was made for a small cathode ray monitor with the 4X3 ratio of old TVs. When it’s seen on newer displays it seems stretched to its limits.

Pick an item from the menu and move through the site and you’ll find more features that feel odd. Small photos do not expand with a click to higher-res versions. Forms for registration or volunteering will click through to pages you are expected to print, fill and send or take into the Fringe office, which is as far as their interactivity stretches. The pre-YouTube videos do not play. There was no way to effectively reproduce them in a collected form. The site is a series of flat html pages and that’s all you get.

Registration page from the 1999 Melbourne Fringe Festival Website
Registration page from the 1999 Melbourne Fringe Festival Website

On the other hand, it works a treat. From a time when a website was only meant to flatly inform, it goes beyond the call. The videos are rare treats from the time. If the forms had to be printed on paper to get to the offices you at least were printing out the official stationery rather than looking through the phone book. If you click from page to page (try reshaping your browser until the material in the centre of the screen fills it more snugly), take in some of the features and notice how much you’re seeing something not just designed for its time but edging towards something much richer than the average late ‘90s website. In fact, in the spirit of the Festival itself, it does feature forward looking content, already making it stand out.

Sample page from 1999 Melbourne Fringe Festival Website
Sample page from 1999 Melbourne Fringe Festival Website


Now, try the page ten years after. On the 2009 site, a slideshow centre screen cycles through images from the shows and features of the festival. Around it, a double layered menu lets you navigate whether you are a performer or a punter, there’s a clickable calendar from which you may book your selections or, if you want to flick through first, you can browse the program and go looking, there is a subscription link, thumbnails (that do expand) of highlights and, when you scroll down, as this one goes beyond the single screen approach, there’s even more. And that’s just the landing page.

Home page of the 2009 Melbourne Fringe Festival Website
Home page of the 2009 Melbourne Fringe Festival Website

In the intervening years there was not just innovation and development of web technology but the users’ expectations of it. Primarily, it needed to be useful rather than flashy. The technology is all but invisible to the user of 2009 who just needs to look at the program and find a show to book. The show was in the venues, not the web page. That said, the design has still been sensitive to shifts in online culture, moving on from the flat presentation that the average home computer of 1999 could handle to images that themselves move on, as you take note of the design lift in 2009 and head in to see what’s on.

Now, look at 2019’s site and witness history. The site was collected at the end of the year, rather than just after the festival, due to difficulties with the gathering, so Fringe are already getting ready for the next year’s festival in high and glamorous fashion. In the next picture you can see that the Festival is over and the website bids you look forward to the next year’s.

Home page of the 2019 Melbourne Fringe Festival Website
Home page of the 2019 Melbourne Fringe Festival Website

The pandemic prevented most festivals in Victoria, but Fringe, forced to cancel, offered new online content for 2020. In 2021, the barriers to public events continued to make them uncertain but Fringe did go ahead and recorded its triumph on that year’s website. The 2022 festival is about to commence with in-person events and a resurrected street parade. We will collect its website after the festival, welcoming back to our collection a longstanding relationship.

Home page of the 2020 Melbourne Fringe Festival Website
Home page of the 2020 Melbourne Fringe Festival Website

At the end of 2021 a collaboration between the State Library Victoria and the Melbourne Fringe Festival was initiated to compile a history of the festival in celebration of its fortieth year, with a call for online contributions by participants and festival goers alike. We are gathering that website as an ongoing project.

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