Hello Dialers, hope all is well! 🎃 Halloween is just around the corner! Well, tomorrow to be exact.
Excerpt from How to Haunt House
And welcome to the second issue of The Dialup Log! This is October 2025 / Issue 2. Can you believe it? It’s been already 2 weeks since the last issue. I have so much to share so, here’s a warning. But please take a look at the behind the desk images just to get a glimpse of what new hats will be online in the near future!
As always, in the newsletters I’ll share about the behind the desk workings, which will mostly be design ideas in the works and research I’ve come a crossed. This week we got a lot samples and designs to share and a few more exciting ideas for November.
Michael from The Dialup Internet
Behind the Desk
Designs this week!
Remember the designs I shared last issue? I got all the samples now. I’ve shown most of them on Instagram Stories.
Dialup Internet Branded
Prodigy Internet Service
Rocky, the Office Assistant
Rocky, the Office Assistant!
Last issue, I was excited for Rocky, the Office Assistant. Well, I have to tell you the amount of time to get the even the initial digitization right took so long, but it was worth it. I feel these hats as a proof of concept looks awesome. With all that being said, I’m currently reworking the illustration with the outline, it didn’t feel as cute as the original Rocky from Office 2000 and I want to get this right. At this point I’m also contemplating on working on a shirt or sweatshirt. (Probably will 🐶)
Getting back to the Rocky, I made two versions: one with the outlines and the other without. I got to tell you how great they came out! I wanted to see how small of an embroidery I could get while still retaining the imagery of Rocky. I’m especially excited about the one without any outlines. It is clean looking. Let me show you a detailed shot.
Adorable dogs
I have one more Microsoft related hat I wanted to test. So then I’ll have at least 2 hats with a similar theme. Hopefully, I’ll have these hats online sooner than later.
The Dialup Internet
The branded hat also came out really well, I love how the pixelated art was interpreted in the embroidery.
I was really worried about the icon. With so much detail, I had to first simplify the colors. Detail image below👇
And finally, as this hat is the first branded hat for me, I thought to give it a special price at $29.99 for the early supporters, you can use it with any discount codes available until the end of year.
The details on the icon is a chef’s kiss
It’s online now!
The Other Branded Hat
For the branded hats, I was actually looking forward to the green low-profile baseball cap. It has a Velcro® closure and the texture on the cotton twill looked smooth.
These hats’ design and material is superb. I especially love how the colors look. The green, and the blue ones that I have are fantastic. Though, I’m unsure of how it’ll fit people.
The text branded dial-up internet
Prodigy, Internet Service
The Prodigy hat has been anticipated by many, but I feel I haven’t completely nailed down the hat and the design. The front embroidery itself is great.
Still, I feel like I need to add other details: like the side and the back to create an appealing cap for those who remember it. Yet, it’s just great with the word ‘Prodigy’ even without knowing the company.
T-shirts, The Whole Internet
Do you remember this book? I do. I’ve seen it most of my 90s life on our house bookshelf.
It’s a great memorable image, an image I remember til this day. So why not make a t-shirt out of it? It was a tedious job getting the book and the details right. Redesigned the whole cover, just typing the title wasn’t enough. The variety in the height and width of each letter and style was distinct from one another.
The Whole Internet - User’s Guide & Catalog by Ed Krol
The Whole Internet T-shirts
In the end, the effort is always worth it. These came in just last week, and I’ve been wearing them everyday. The quality of the shirts are awesome. Not to soft not to stiff just right. Still pondering about the price point, with the cost already high it’s been a dilemma. What price point would you buy this?
AltaVista Hats in the making
AltaVista HQ Signage
Yup, I had one visitor look up AltaVista on the search bar, and decided to make the hat. It was super difficult to find a good image of the AltaVista logo. Not to mention, how often it changed.
I settled for the 1995-1997 logo version that would be most similar to the actual signage of the AltaVista HQ in Massachusetts.
You can see below that the logo looks awfully familiar with another brand cough Patagonia cough. Out of the three, the left most looks the most visually pleasing. The other two could be great candidates for water bottles. Lots of design choices I need to make for this. Wanted to also incorporate the yellow color, perhaps another time. This will have to suffice for a test run. Oh, and these are on a trucker cap, thought it felt more outdoorsy.
AltaVista Design Mockups
Interesting Magazine Ads
Wow, that was a long behind the desk section. I thought about skipping this section, but I remember viewing these 2-page ads and finding a certain je ne sais quoi in them.
Magazine 2-page Ads
Funny how old ads used to sell beliefs like freedom, creativity, and being different. Or perhaps it was a time ads believed in people. That people would still work together even in the freedom, and in being different to making things better for everyone. Today, most ads sell approval as in making the “right” choice, saying the “right” thing, fitting in. And what’s “right” is always framed as efficient, on-trend, and risk-free rather than messy, alive, and curious.
Maybe I’m just nostalgic, but it feels like we traded originality for algorithms. On social media, even being too unique can feel like a bad look, the feed doesn’t reward what doesn’t trend.
I’ve been thinking about why I’m drawn to the 90s tech companies. Maybe it’s because the companies seemed to believe in their own drive. That they actually could make the world better. I mean I’m sure it wasn’t all rosy back then. Yet, today, you feel that most companies are out there to optimize revenue, keep selling until the end of the world.
Greed is always there, but it felt more human back then. Just looking at the old ads proves that. There was a conversation between company and customer, not a hierarchy. I mean this could be all due to the massive growth modern tech companies have today. Yet, I can’t feel the connection with these companies when using their software like I used to feel.
With all this said, I don’t want to end on a melancholy note. I actually feel that people, the everyday users, have been rebuilding a world-wide community online. The short-form videos, quick text replies, and causal threads have connected strangers across the globe. It’s the users who have been creating the positive loops inside these systems.
I just hope we can keep exercising that goodness, even as corporations dive deeper into the latest technology, AI, and try to steer things toward a one-way system in their favor.
Until Next Time!
This has been a very long issue. As you may already know, I’m using beehiiv, a platform for newsletters. I’m hoping this will help keep a history of the issues and also help me better understand the subscribers for better writing and updates.
Thanks again for reading all the way through, like truly, this must’ve been a task. And with that if you ever have questions or suggestions send me an email at [email protected]
No AI was almost not used to write this. Only section I got the help with AI was the Magazine section. But it was more of a editing session with AI than letting it write everything. Wanted to make the reading more comprehensible and easier. But yes, I’ll try to get better at writing. Until next time!