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Brutalist Design Is the Bad Influence We All Need

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Re: Brutalist Design Is the Bad Influence We All Need

#31

Post by aeneasmackenzie »

smacktoward wrote: post #16

I'm confused. I don't see what makes most of the examples cited here "Brutalist" in any meaningful fashion. Brutalism is, of course, a fuzzy (and contentious) label to begin with. But the article cites two interpretations of the term that we could use to evaluate how Brutalist a given design is: honest, unpretentious and anti-bourgeois and a sense of roughness, exposed structures and visible thought processes The pro…

Here is an "exposed structures and visible thought processes," website: http://motherfuckingwebsite.com

Re: Brutalist Design Is the Bad Influence We All Need

#32

Post by rhizome »

smacktoward wrote: post #16

I'm confused. I don't see what makes most of the examples cited here "Brutalist" in any meaningful fashion. Brutalism is, of course, a fuzzy (and contentious) label to begin with. But the article cites two interpretations of the term that we could use to evaluate how Brutalist a given design is: honest, unpretentious and anti-bourgeois and a sense of roughness, exposed structures and visible thought processes The pro…

Brutalism is not about drabness, it's about the use of basic materials. Beyond that, I think a lot of what you ask appears to be an attempt to create a 1:1 relationship between the terms of an architecture (as defined by the article) and web design, which is a big ask.

Re: Brutalist Design Is the Bad Influence We All Need

#33

Post by niftich »

niftich wrote: post #29
smacktoward wrote: post #16

I'm confused. I don't see what makes most of the examples cited here "Brutalist" in any meaningful fashion. Brutalism is, of course, a fuzzy (and contentious) label to begin with. But the article cites two interpretations of the term that we could use to evaluate how Brutalist a given design is: honest, unpretentious and anti-bourgeois and a sense of roughness, exposed structures and visible thought processes The pro…

As for "exposed structures", I'd include the prominence of the box model underlying the rendered HTML, emphasized by visible borders and/or distinct backgrounds. As others are mentioning, the border-heavy http://www.zku-berlin.org (included in the article's examples) qualifies, and so do 1990s-style websites that appear to be authored with tables and don't try to cloak the inner workings of the layout.

Then again, the label 'brutalist' is fraught with conflated interpretations that to some followed logically, yet in other contexts they appear to be in conflict. From the very beginning, the term sprung out of linguistic confusion between French and English [1], where Le Corbusier's French descriptor for 'raw concrete' was lost in translation and reinterpreted by English commentators as brutal, then art imitated life as later works seized on this attitude and were intentionally designed to be provocative [2].

So no one knows whether brutalism is concrete-heavy minimalism, or concrete-heavy bizarro-showoffism, but the core of it is the use of a drab but versatile, non-organic material, so one could venture to guess that any website that features excessive use of color and vibrancy, and cloaking the existence of edges between disparate functional blocks would automatically be disqualified on aesthetics alone.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12685595#12689331 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12685595#12688364

Re: Brutalist Design Is the Bad Influence We All Need

#35

Post by sporkologist »

Rotdhizon wrote: post #8

I was impressed with the brutalist architecture, those plain concrete buildings have something about them that I can't place. Maybe like the old concrete tower hovering over the backdrop of a new, colorful, city? Something about it peeks your senses. As for the web design, it was also interesting. I liked some of the designs, others not so much. The website for zku: http://www.zku-berlin.org Something about that just…

It's refreshing seeing a site without a mystery-meat UI.

Re: Brutalist Design Is the Bad Influence We All Need

#37

Post by malvosenior »

smacktoward wrote: post #16

I'm confused. I don't see what makes most of the examples cited here "Brutalist" in any meaningful fashion. Brutalism is, of course, a fuzzy (and contentious) label to begin with. But the article cites two interpretations of the term that we could use to evaluate how Brutalist a given design is: honest, unpretentious and anti-bourgeois and a sense of roughness, exposed structures and visible thought processes The pro…

Craigslist is a great example of what actual brutalist design would look like on the web. Not the web, but ncurses and other cli like uis are probably brutalist.

The examples in the blog post don't strike me as brutalist at all. More like Swiss modern, which at this point has been done to death.

I think designers like the "clean" look but I find it to antiseptic and antihuman. Myspace was an example of a human (but not brutalist imho) design. Working in a hyper sterile environment as these designs all seem to me doesn't encourage creativity or jive with reality.

Re: Brutalist Design Is the Bad Influence We All Need

#38

Post by cpeterso »

digi_owl wrote: post #10

When i think web-brutalism i do not think of anything illustrated in this article. I think of (old) Reddit, Craigslist, this very "forum", and similar ones that are mostly text with minimal/no JS or graphics.

The Drudge Report is another good example of a brutalist, content-over-presentation website.

Re: Brutalist Design Is the Bad Influence We All Need

#39

Post by SlapHappy »

I think HN is better example of "brutalist" web design than most of the examples. Plain typefaces and colors, rigid lines and block-y structures.

As for the bit about brutalism being "honest, unpretentious and anti-bourgeois" - LOL - the only people who actually rave about it as an aesthetic are the most pretentious people I know (not that there's anything wrong w/ that).

Re: Brutalist Design Is the Bad Influence We All Need

#40

Post by nostalgeek »

smacktoward wrote: post #16

I'm confused. I don't see what makes most of the examples cited here "Brutalist" in any meaningful fashion. Brutalism is, of course, a fuzzy (and contentious) label to begin with. But the article cites two interpretations of the term that we could use to evaluate how Brutalist a given design is: honest, unpretentious and anti-bourgeois and a sense of roughness, exposed structures and visible thought processes The pro…

> I'm confused. I don't see what makes most of the examples cited here "Brutalist" in any meaningful fashion.

Because these examples have nothing to do with "brutalism" in architecture. It's just another buzzword misappropriated by (web) designers. 5 years ago everything was "flat" now everything is "brutalist" including what was "flat".

Designers shouldn't pick a style because it's trendy, they should do their job as designers and actually design for their intended audience and medium.

HN is no more "brutalist" than Craiglist. Effective web design should be optimized for fast loading times, readability, easy information retrieval and responsiveness. These issues are far more challenging than trying to fit a style du jour.

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