Elise Blanchard
ABSTRACT
The internet has ingrained itself into every aspect of our lives, but there's one aspect of the digital world that some take for granted. Did you ever notice that many links, specifically hyperlinks, are blue? When a coworker casually asked me why links are blue, I was stumped. As a user experience designer who has created websites since 2001, I've always made my links blue. I have advocated for the specific shade of blue, and for the consistent application of blue, yes, but I've never stopped and wondered, why are links blue? It was just a fact of life. Grass is green and hyperlinks are blue. Culturally, we associate links with the color blue so much that in 2016, when Google changed its links to black, it created quite a disruption [1].
But now, I find myself all consumed by the question, WHY are links blue? WHO decided to make them blue? WHEN was this decision made, and HOW has this decision made such a lasting impact?
Mosaic, an early browser released by Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina on January 23, 1993 [2], had blue hyperlinks. To truly understand the origin and evolution of hyperlinks, I took a journey through technology history and interfaces to explore how links were handled before color monitors, and how interfaces and hyperlinks rapidly evolved once color monitors became an option.
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