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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

#55

Post by michrassena »

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.

The only thing I can think of as web-brutalist is table-based layouts with the cell borders exposed.

Re: Brutalist Design Is the Bad Influence We All Need

#56

Post by spking »

kolpa wrote: post #19
master_ant wrote: post #7

I'm starting to get tired of the cookie-cutter Bootstrap and Squarespace templates taking over the web. This is a refreshing read, I like the comparisons it makes to brutalism in architecture.

It's backwards, though, because Bootstrap and Squarespace are Brutalist (to whatever extent that word really applies to the web at all): cheap, egalitarian, and simple to use.

Correct. Bootstrap is the IKEA of frontend frameworks. Simple, predictable, cheap/free, and easy enough for almost anyone to pick up and build with.

Re: Brutalist Design Is the Bad Influence We All Need

#57

Post by eeZah7Ux »

SlapHappy wrote: post #39

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).

Describing a startup-happy billionaire-loving site like HN as "anti-bourgeois" is comical.

Re: Brutalist Design Is the Bad Influence We All Need

#58

Post by l9k »

ianbicking wrote: post #23
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…

The ZK/U site (in one of the thumbnails) is one of the better examples, I thought: http://www.zku-berlin.org/

This site is better viewed zoomed out to 60%

Re: Brutalist Design Is the Bad Influence We All Need

#59

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

niftich wrote: post #33
niftich wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Brutalist architecture was a disaster, especially in countries like the UK where poor light and regular rain make grey concrete one of the most depressing and least durable of all possible building materials.

The UK was littered with Brutalist "statement" buildings. Most have been pulled down now, and - with a few high profile exceptions, which have escaped the low-budget ghetto most of the movement settled in - the style is generally considered a mistake.

I have no idea why anyone would want to copy the aesthetic in web design. But then the designs on show don't look Brutalist so much as "edgy" 80s magazine kitsch, which in turn influenced a certain kind of minimal web style which has actually been around since the 90s.

It's true that web design lacks real creativity and diversity, but that's partly because web pages that are trying to sell you something - as opposed to making an artistic statement - are optimised to balance content delivery with behaviour modification with cognitive load. There are only so many ways to do that, and the affordable ones are already in use.

Re: Brutalist Design Is the Bad Influence We All Need

#60

Post by mnemonicsloth »

tomc1985 wrote: post #4

And yet for all its supposed innovation, web brutalistism still looks overly pretentious as it revels in its 'aesthetic' of psuedo-Swiss minimalism. I'm sick of the garbage that designers these days pass off as 'form'. It ruins computing. Sci-fi showed us the future was large screens full of data and smart humans doing meaningful shit with it... but reality is we pay beaucorp bucks to waste 98% of a 4K, 9-megapixel d…

Beaucorp! What a great new word. One of the world-spanning megacorporations from William Gibson but decorated in a Beaux-Arts style.
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