Webby Winners Gallery + Archive, Visually Explore 16 Years of the Best of Internet History

The Webby Awards partnered with Internet Explorer 10 to create the Webby Winners Gallery + Archive, a fantastic interactive gallery and archive that catalogues every Webby nominee and winner since it began in 1997. It’s described as a “virtual time machine of digital history exploring the evolution of design, commerce and culture during the Web’s most transformative years.” The Webbys’ Executive Director David-Michel Davies states, “Developing a place to showcase Webby Winners was an ambitious task; the archive includes the most significant online innovations and trends since the Web’s infancy. It is an incredible collection of digital work, a chronological showcase of the evolution of the Web since its humble beginning.” The nominees for the 17th Annual Webby Awards will be announced on April 9, 2013.

The Webby Winners Gallery + Archive is also a reflection of the Internet itself, filled with interesting statistical data from each year the Webby Awards has been in existence. Webby winners — and the categories they’ve been honored in — mirror the prevailing technologies and trends of the most important eras of the Internet, from the hardcoded, text-based Websites of the late 90s, to the mobile & social smartphone experiences we interact with daily.

The Webby Winners Gallery + Archive is something to explore. It is an experience to lose yourself in. It has been optimized for the touch space, responsively designed, and tediously adherent to the current best practices of user experience design. You can watch archived video, explore the history of the Webbys and revel in the lost sites that so quickly becomes forgotten as the Web innovates itself for future users.

The Gallery + Archive is the result of a truly collaborative experience between The Webby Awards, Microsoft IE 10, and AREA 17.

Behind the Scenes:

via The Webby Awards