Background

Apple released HyperCard in 1987 to both enthusiasm and confusion. Multimedia was still a very new concept and Apple needed an example of the power of interactive information. Two Apple Creative Directors had an idea—create an interactive HyperCard version of the 1987 Apple annual report.

The project

I was a member of the four-person team that designed and produced the 1987 HyperCard annual report. Links, pans, zooms, and highlights are familar features of the Web. But in 1987 our audience was unfamiliar with even the most basic conventions of interactive information. We had to solve, perhaps for the first time in a non-experimental project, the design problems of navigating hyperlinked information.

A select number of 1987 Apple annual reports shipped with this diskette. We hoped curiosity would drive press and analysts, who typically used Windows computers, to locate a Mac to run the HyperCard stack.

The interactive annual report had a timeline of Apple history, a complete product catalog, and sections on finances, strategy, and markets.