Neubrutalism is taking over the web? • Hacker News Board

Re: Neubrutalism is taking over the web?

#181

Post by travisjungroth » Thu, Apr 21, 2022, 3:41 PM UTC

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #94

samatman wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Real world objects rarely change design because of the costs involved What an astonishing claim. Fashion is too easy, you could maybe wiggle away from clothes not being "objects in the real world" although I assure you the Emperor aside they are exactly that. How about cars?

Curiously enough both industries you use in your example (Auto, Fashion) have permanent designers in their payroll which again touches on GP's points. I don't have to learn how to use scissors or paperclips everytime, I use somebody else's stationery. There is a fundamental form to daily objects that does not change or otherwise changes in leap steps often by completely depricating the old object.

I don’t know, this argument seems to be losing validity. Couldn’t it be that industries that need lots of design for some other reason hire designers? That would be cause going the other way.

> There is a fundamental form to daily objects that does not change or otherwise changes in leap steps often by completely depricating the old object.

And this just doesn’t seem true at all. Should I hold these papers together with paper clips or binder clips? Maybe a staple. How about one of those new air staplers?

Re: Neubrutalism is taking over the web?

#182

Post by NoGravitas » Thu, Apr 21, 2022, 3:47 PM UTC

ogogmad wrote: post #121

KaiserPro wrote: post #105

I think neobrutalism is the wrong name. I think it gives it a gravitas that is undeserved. This is better described as word95 or ms-bobism. The colours, the style is firmly rooted in the mid 90s graphic design style of liberated desktop publishing. Brutalism was all about function over form, using concrete to make a space that is functional, large light and bright.

Brutalism has earned a bad reputation, so this term is at best backhanded praise if not an insult. I personally much prefer a realistic 3-dimensional "skeuomorphic" design to flat-looking stuff. Highly technical imitation of reality is quite pleasing on the eyes. It also looks more serious, while the flat stuff often looks like a cartoon for nursery children.

I'd rather say brutalism has a divisive reputation.

Re: Neubrutalism is taking over the web?

#183

Post by philwelch » Thu, Apr 21, 2022, 3:58 PM UTC

phoehne wrote: post #161

jrochkind1 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, I was thinking about that too. But one aspect of brutalist architecture is "showing how it's made", making infrastructure visible, making structural apparatus visible. And making raw materials visible for what they are, not trying to make them look like something they're not. That's part of it's "rawness" too, as I've always understood it -- it's not just about using concrete. That part does seem to some extent…

I think that context matters. Coming out of the 1940's, where fascism preyed on nostalgia and fear, brutalism brings forward a concept of the future that is both fearless and lacks nostalgia. Not seeing the world through your imagination of how you want to see it, but how it really is. Unlike Albert's Spear's or Mussolini's Roman and Greek inspired pieces (setting EUR aside), a brutalist view is honest, simple, and l…

> Coming out of the 1940's, where fascism preyed on nostalgia and fear, brutalism brings forward a concept of the future that is both fearless and lacks nostalgia.

Ah, that explains why brutalist buildings look so much like all those concrete bunkers and flak towers that Germany built during the war. It all makes sense now.

Re: Neubrutalism is taking over the web?

#184

Post by xboxnolifes » Thu, Apr 21, 2022, 4:33 PM UTC

yawnxyz wrote: post #48

> Brutalism is a 1950’s architectural trend that was abandoning all decorations, and creating brutally simple buildings made from concrete. They often weren’t even painted to emphasize their brutal nature. So big, brutal blocks of concrete. The word "brut" came from French "Béton brut" which means "raw concrete" — has nothing with how "brutal" we perceive it to be. There's lots of architecture articles covering this…

Today I learned. This makes a lot more sense to me now knowing it isn't an emotional categorization.

Re: Neubrutalism is taking over the web?

#185

Post by gameman144 » Thu, Apr 21, 2022, 4:36 PM UTC

dmos62 wrote: post #120

jonnycomputer wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The English word brutal comes from French or medieval Latin brutalis, brutus, meaning dull, stupid. Hence the word "brute". Savagely violent is only one of the meanings of the adjective. It also means "punishingly hard or uncomfortable" or "direct and lacking any attempt to disguise unpleasantness". These latter two meanings of "brutal" seem particularly apt to describe this architectural style; in fact it seems to m…

So "beton brut" or "cidre brut" (dry cider) refer to the concrete's or cider's dullness or stupidity? No, they refer to their rawness and crudeness. The original commentor was spot on. By the way, a more complete set of the meanings of Latin brūtus is heavy, unwieldy, dull, stupid, brutish.

Taking brute to mean "unrefined", you can see that it fits into both those definitions and scenarios just fine.

An unrefined person is dull, stupid, or violent; an unrefined product is raw, crude, or lacking polish.

Re: Neubrutalism is taking over the web?

#186

Post by achr2 » Thu, Apr 21, 2022, 4:41 PM UTC

nathias wrote: post #19

I don't think the examples in the article are very good, there seems to be more of a retro 70s vibe / comic book vibe to it because of the roundness of fonts and borders along with polish. Brutalism is raw, cold and uncaring characterized by monumental structures sharp edges etc. In the context of web the rawness is a return to html and css (use of tables, links, buttons etc.) instead of slick widgets, stark contrast…

Well put, my thoughts exactly! I really wish we returned to brut (raw) web pages in general. Without JS, SPAs, etc.

Re: Neubrutalism is taking over the web?

#187

Post by DoingIsLearning » Thu, Apr 21, 2022, 4:45 PM UTC

travisjungroth wrote: post #181

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curiously enough both industries you use in your example (Auto, Fashion) have permanent designers in their payroll which again touches on GP's points. I don't have to learn how to use scissors or paperclips everytime, I use somebody else's stationery. There is a fundamental form to daily objects that does not change or otherwise changes in leap steps often by completely depricating the old object.

I don’t know, this argument seems to be losing validity. Couldn’t it be that industries that need lots of design for some other reason hire designers? That would be cause going the other way. > There is a fundamental form to daily objects that does not change or otherwise changes in leap steps often by completely depricating the old object. And this just doesn’t seem true at all. Should I hold these papers together w…

Taking your example a paper clip and a binder clip both have the same fundamental form you have to separate two parts of the thing that then squeeze the paper together.

A stapler is a leap step in binding things, where an interely different fundamental form is used to permanently bind things. An air stapler has a different operating principle (I don't push a staple a pneumatic driver does it for me) but it is not fundamentally different from a regular stapler in how it binds things.

Storing this comment on a server is several leap steps forward from archiving a printed document and binding it to other comments in this thread. :)

Re: Neubrutalism is taking over the web?

#188

Post by BizarroLand » Thu, Apr 21, 2022, 4:48 PM UTC

Zandikar wrote: post #43

mark_and_sweep wrote: post #18

> People simply get bored with how their apps and websites look after six to seven years. They need a change. Is there any research that supports this claim? If I use an app for 6 years, why would I suddenly need a change? I'm still ocassionally using a 10 y/o version of Photoshop. In fact, I'm very happy that it does not change. I wouldn't want to spend time on re-learning the UI. The same is true for many apps that…

Agreed, I'd love to see some data on that claim, and for it to be in context with the friction a new design has against an existing userbase when a design change occurs. I get that as time goes on, functionality, usecases, userbases, developers, frameworks, etc all evolve over time, and it's wise to make changes to keep up with those shifts in paradigms (rise of mobile use vs desktop in the 2010's for example). Never…

I think at least some significant portion of the constant redesign push is caused by UI/UX managers and employees justifying their continued paychecks. If you are a software company with only a few major apps then at some point not redesigning the app on a regular basis would call for a departmental reorg.

Re: Neubrutalism is taking over the web?

#189

Post by darkwater » Thu, Apr 21, 2022, 4:56 PM UTC

krageon wrote: post #40

darkwater wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like fashion... I wonder why we don't all wear the same style as 100 years ago, no? /s

You're apparently sarcastic, but fashion really does look like nonsense to me. I'm not sure what point you're making.

That human beings, or a portion of them, like to change their external look often enough. Maybe not in every society on Earth, but surely in many of them.

Re: Neubrutalism is taking over the web?

#190

Post by tialaramex » Thu, Apr 21, 2022, 4:57 PM UTC

bin_bash wrote: post #168

tialaramex wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course the real thing to know here on Javascript is that they are related. Eich's crazy scripting language "Livescript" was going to exist independently, but then there was a chance to ride on the coattails of the Java enthusiasm, to do that it needed the inappropriate name, and it needed syntax that looks enough like a semicolon language even though it's a Lisp. Some of the obvious defects in Javascript are (at l…

You’re missing my point. Perhaps I should’ve said “interchangeable” instead of “related”. My point is that it makes you an outsider. A recruiter that assumes you know JS simply because you know Java is quickly dismissed for good reason—despite any historical merit. This is similar in architecture circles. If you mix up “brutal” with “brutalism” you’ll be perceived as a clueless outsider. I’m sure there are architects…

> I’m sure there are architects out there that argue they are related, but without addressing this faux pas head on it makes the author seem ignorant.

That's exactly what I was getting at. Every discipline is like this.

If some nutjob tries to argue with my pathologist friend N that actually the proteins in your food change your DNA, the nutter is going to have a bad time because that's lunacy.

But if N is talking over dinner with another biologist who maybe got her PhD at a different institution, and in the course of conversation the other biologist says she doubts the central dogma (the "central dogma" of molecular biology is that the nucleic acid sequences make proteins, but the proteins don't make nucleic acid sequences, sometimes over-simplified as DNA->RNA->Protein) then N is not going to react the same way, because even though it's apparently the same idea as the nutter, the context is different.

The central dogma seems plausible to me (as a lay person), but popular simplifications are now known to be definitely wrong, so who knows, at least it should have a more defensible name, (apparently Crick did not know what the word "dogma" exactly means and was just looking for synonyms for "hypothesis") as of course if it does fail you can expect the first sort of nutter will feel vindicated.

In the context of "I too have a PhD in this discipline" doubts about the dogma (ignoring for a moment that in its technical sense you can't doubt a dogma that's the whole point) seem rational, while in the context of "A Big Mac can change your DNA" it's insane.

Likewise I'm sure that in the context of basically "I hate all this old concrete crap" pointing out that Brutalism is related to the word "Brutal" just gets you dismissed -- but in the context of arguing about the relative merits of Wyndham Court and the tower block "extension" to South Stoneham House in my city, it doesn't seem so unreasonable to observe that what people didn't like about these two structures wasn't so much their Brutalist architecture as the Brutal reality of living in them...