Why Beige Was the Rage In Old Computers

When most people think about 1980s design, they may think of neon fonts, lipstick logos, chrome, and cinematic collages.

During the 1980s, people in the United States were forgetting about disco and the Vietnam War, and looking forward to big, loud, bold, and futuristic themes, such as neon fonts and geometric shapes. You see these themes on a lot of 80s movie posters, VHS tapes, packaging, and even binders from the 1980s (think the Trapper Keeper). These aesthetics focused on "chilling out" and escapism. What made these designs unique was their natural emergence from the previous culture in the 1970s. In the 70s, the aesthetic was moving toward promoting passivity and peace. The 1980s took that to another level, focusing the culture on night life, convenience and technological innovation. That's why 1980s design often appears to be so busy and sometimes tacky. It doesn't take itself seriously, and it is communal, rather than self-centered.

The 1980s were still a time where the people still had control over the culture, creating and innovating things. Big businesses would catch on to the trends, and make them big. Corporations scouted what the people were doing, and then responded to it. Today, it's almost like the other way around. The big corporations make the culture, and the people adapt to it.

And this is why the different 1980s aesthetics are so various and diverse, because they aren't simply reflections of one culture, but multiple cultures converging as a single culture of a decade.

There is something more, though.

What you may notice about 1980s design is the unintentional lack of minimalism.

Designs and aesthetics were intentional. Companies were targeting products to specific people, who want a specific aesthetic, and therefore, different industries catered to different cultures, and you get a wide variety of aesthetics. These days, everything from product packaging, to web design is about a smooth, simple, and minimalist interface. One size fits all, if you will. The less busy the graphics and imagery, the better.

Not in the 1980s. The 1980s were about appropriate themes. For instance, night life graphics made you think of the 80s dance culture, where neon graphics converge with outer space, tropical scenery (think of mixed drinks), and the freedom of stylish individuality that for some reason, is able to flourish within a monoculture. Lipstick fonts were used in female clothing stores. Space imagery decorated the packaging of computer games.

In addition, geometric shapes were also used in the foreground of futuristic imagery, giving credibility to the idea of the simplicity of mankind having dominion over the earth, creating colorful and enjoyable things, while maintaining our simplicity in who we are.

And then ... there were PCs and Macs.

They were a plain beige.

When things from the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s looked so colorful, we have the beige computer of the same era. Plain and utilitarian. By the 1990s, Macintosh computers became platinum color, and IBM compatibles were still known for beige. There's a reason why a lot of businesses continued to use these beige IBM compatibles for business information and networking, even into the 2010s. It's because their simplicity, both inside and outside, got the job done.

As the subtitle says, in an age where everything was colorful, computers were bland. Bland on purpose. Bland with a purpose.

Computers were made beige intentionally, for the purpose of fitting their environments. For the purpose of blending in. It's a color that suggests adaptability, and at the same time, modesty. The computer modestly displayed itself as an appliance that didn't command attention, but was able to perform in a functional way.

Could this be why so many people, including Millennials and Zoomers, are getting back into vintage style and technology?

Contrary to what you may believe, it's not just people who were teenagers in the 1980s who are currently paying nostalgic attention to vintage technology and clothing styles from the 1980s.

It's a lot more than nostalgia. It's because 1980s technology was made with a function. A television was just for watching television. If you wanted to watch a movie, then you needed a VCR. A computer was set up for a different set of activities.

Whereas, in the 1950s, businesses that made appliances tried to make things like kitchen appliances look like space gadgets.

The beige tones of 1970s, 1980s and 1990s computers reflect a need for tech businesses to make things that are high tech, but appear as normal appliances. The microprocessor is a big reason why computers shrunk, from looking like giant calculators, to being something slightly bigger than a telephone, to actually being a telephone. Some of the earliest businesses making computers were companies like Univac, RCA, and IBM. Early computers were huge, sometimes called "mainframes", and then leading to the so-called "minicomputer", which were anything but small according to today's standards. Throughout the decades, these computers shrunk due to side innovations, such as microchips, microprocessors, and floppy disks. These innovations, and others, enabled the computer to also shrink into an appliance-sized business machine. It was the 32-bit microprocessor that really brought computers into the modern era.

With the launch of the Macintosh in 1984, the idea that a computer could be a household appliance took form, much because of Jeff Ruskin. The early ads for the Mac really illustrated this idea that the computer could be more than a "business machine". And the Mac was just that -- an appliance that fit well on a desk, looking fashionable rather than something tacky. A tradition that is carried over today in Internet-of-Things products, which are built in standard geometric shapes, and harboring advanced technology.

And, there's something about the smell of these computers as they were turned on that is also indicative of its environment in the administrative landscape.

The beige gave these computers an identity that distinguished them from other objects, without being too unique. The off-color plastic identifies an appliance with a character that is instantly identifiable upon seeing it, yet, not too pretentious. The beige says "I'm a computer", and then quietly turns back to what it's doing. It doesn't try to pretend like its disk drives, on/off switches, and circuitry are not there, and nonchalantly places a CRT monitor on top of itself. A monitor that also has the same beige plastic.