The design of the first iteration of the BITs used a header in bright red to establish some visual identity for the bulletin, referencing the University brand red. Nick himself acknowledges that he’s not a designer and, at the time, didn’t have any professional design support. Therefore, the design of this early issue is more functional. The use of the blue hyperlinks and early 'comments' feature would have been relatively new and unfamiliar. These simplified elements might be a window into the future, showing us where design might be headed in the 21st century. These early 90s digital design contain fewer images and almost no media – for a good reason. The data required to load these visual elements via Web would have been very expensive. From a sustainability perspective today, graphic designers increasingly opt for simpler designs that communicate the content clearly but keep data-heavy media to a minimum.

By September 1997, the second iteration of BITs shows more consideration of design, expanding the BITs header image, displayed in a handwriting font, across the top of the page. The use of University design elements, including the University crest, increases alignment with the University brand, establishing BITs as a corporate document with a University-wide audience. The increased use of design features shows an intent to communicate more clearly the purpose and standing of the publication.

The third iteration maintains the columns and header but reflects the professional design support of the centralised Visual Resources team. The handwriting font used for the BITs header has been replaced by a logo that imitates the aesthetic of text generated by a computer, with square brackets and all lower-case letters. Using elements that reflected popular design style and typography of the early 2000s era – mixing different fonts and using mismatched bracket sizes – helped to create more modern publication. This approach moved away from the more traditional graphic approaches seen across other University publications, generating some controversy at the time. In addition, EUCS-specific branding appeared, establishing a visual identity for the central computer services.

This fourth iteration of BITs design demonstrates a refinement of the third iteration with increased use of quality images, including images of human faces – the people behind the machines. Though more professional, this iteration of design still reflects creative choices and deviations from official corporate communications. The graphic in the top right-hand corner reflects a technological tartan. Listen to Nick explain its origins in this interview with Sonia in the video below.

The University’s mission to understand its impact on the environment and address the effects of climate change is not a recent phenomenon. According to this Special Green issue of BITs published in May 1994, ‘Sir David Smith launched the University's Agenda for the Environment in 1991, aiming to put the University at the forefront of environmental teaching, research and institutional behaviour.’ Computing services were at the heart of this initiative, with articles both about environmentally friendly use of computers and about the solution presented by technologies such as email to reduce use of paper. The final issue of BITs, published in Autumn 2019, focussed on ‘Sustainable IT’ showing how this initiative to make the University greener has persisted and evolved over the past 30 years.

On the 1 August 1994, the University’s ‘website’ EDINFO moved to the World Wide Web. The move to ‘W3’ would provide ‘formatted text, colour images and sound’. In this issue of BITs, Giles Sutherland explains: ‘An underlined area of text indicates a "hyperlink" which, when clicked, leads to another page or body of information…’. It’s hard to imagine a time when the navigation and basic functionality of the Web weren’t second nature. These innovative features in 1994 just go to show how far the Web has advanced since the 1990s. Before W3, the Internet was not necessarily global. As Sutherland tells us: ‘W3 allows you to connect to any "servers" (computers holding W3 material) really easily, wherever they are, so it's just as easy to connect to Hawaii as it is to the King's Buildings.’

Before digital technologies, access to education was largely limited to those with the ability to attend lectures in-person. In the 1990s, central IT rolled out new platforms to make education more accessible to a wider, more diverse range of students. Dr Jeff Haywood, Director of Flexible Learning at the University of Edinburgh in 1997 explains: ‘This debate is not limited to distance education for the so-called non-traditional students (part-time, mature, in rural locations etc) but is also about DE's place in satisfying the higher education needs of the 18-22 year olds in urban areas, which has generally been catered for in the past by on-campus degree programmes.’ These new Distance and Flexible Learning platforms have a renewed significance for those of us living in the post-COVID-19 world, where remote studying and working became the only way to study and work safely.

In 1999, the Y2K bug made headlines across the world. For younger viewers, the Y2K bug referred to a widespread fear that computers would malfunction at 00:00 on 1 January 2000 as computer clocks weren’t programmed past 1999. This type of widespread public concern about unknown consequences of new technologies can be seen today. Introducing new technologies comes with potential risks. While the Y2K scare never came to anything, the rise of AI-driven services and growing market share of only a handful of tech corporations raises new questions about the future impact of adopting new technologies.