Austin's 1990s Answer to Silicon Valley

[Technology]: [Texas]:

Silicon Hills [caption title].

Austin: Civic Pride, Inc. / Clarke Printing, 1995. Color printed map on sturdy, glossy paper, 37.5 x 24 inches, with the title, sponsor, and footer printed in embossed gold foil. Some short heavy creases and rubbing in image area, moderate edge wear, pinholes in corners. Still, very good condition. Item #12934

An eye-catching poster map of Austin, Texas in the fledgling years of its tech boom, and a very obvious product of the 1990s. Apart from the 1996 calendar at the bottom, the poster features rudimentary Photoshop elements and numerous dot-com bubble companies peppered among technology companies that survive to this day. The sponsor of the map is printed between the bottom of the map and the calendar, Pro Fasteners and Components on Springdale Road. Austin's identity as "Silicon Hills" began around this period, with local business groups hoping to replicate the economic vibrancy enjoyed by the Bay Area's Silicon Valley in earlier decades. The map identifies dozens of companies using an interesting mix of logos, corporate headquarters, and photographs of actual employees. Some of the imagery is amusing to a larger audience, while other images would likely be recognizable strictly to a local audience. The geographic inaccuracies are waved away with a humorous note in the lower right: "Warning...Reality Bytes. So it has nothing to do with this poster...."

The map was designed by Art Director Mark Bruneman and published in Austin in 1995 by Civic Pride, Inc. The firm was acquired by Silicon Maps, which continues to create similar productions of tech-heavy areas today. Different versions of the present map were apparently issued in the late-1990s. OCLC reports just a single institutional copy of any version of the map, issued in 1997 by Civic Pride and held in the Rumsey Collection at Stanford.

Price: $3,500