The Wave of the Future

👓 less than 1 minute

TL;DR — A brief history of "The Wave of the Future".

While watching Weird Science for the hundredth time today, I noticed this amazing image hanging on Wyatt’s wall:

Catch the Wave!

I don’t know how I’ve missed it all these years (although I suspect it was because I’d never watched a high-def version before). I’ve long been a fan of the original Great Wave off Kanagawa woodblock print, and have enjoyed the many images that parody and/or were inspired by it, but I’d never seen one with such a great “digital” look to it, and I was curious to find out how it came to be.

Apparently, it was made by a design agency called Grafik in 1981 for a computer trade show. The amazing thing is that, despite its appearance (and intended use), it wasn’t actually computer-generated at all, and was instead created by meticulously coloring each square by hand… with pencils.

“The Wave of the Future”, indeed.

Fortunately, I was able to find a larger version of it, and now, thanks to the power of the internet (and, in particular, reddit user acoolrocket), I’m happy to have this image on my laptop as my wallpaper. Too cool!