
UX brutalism - takinola
https://www.uxbrutalism.com/
======
SwellJoe
This is funny, but I think also misses the point of Brutalism entirely.

Brutalist architecture is _functional_ first (but often beautiful, too). The
examples of Brutalist web design almost entirely miss out on being functional
by being hard to read, abstract (not merely containing abstract elements, but
abstract at its core), and lacking in the clean hard lines commonly seen in
Brutalism.

There are some examples in the linked gallery
([http://brutalistwebsites.com/](http://brutalistwebsites.com/)) that I think
can be fairly compared to Brutalist architecture, but nowhere near the
majority of them. Most are just ugly and gimmicky. Brutalism may have been
ugly and gimmicky at times, but it wasn't the core motivating force for any
Brutalist work of note.

~~~
0xcde4c3db
Arguably, a major point of Brutalism is letting the essence of the materials
come through rather than covering them up. In that sense, I think "Brutalist"
web design would connote embracing things like hypertext, links, and
hierarchical structure rather than building up the illusion that your website
is some ethereal dance of pure unsullied UX. The infamous "Motherfucking
Website" [1] might be the best-known example of deliberately showcasing this
approach.

[1] [http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/](http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/)

~~~
b4ux1t3
I think that early web (say, pre-Web 2.0) was the epitome of Brutalist design.
Because resources were limited, you had to make the most of what you had,
leading to that no-nonsense, sparse style. I think it's beautiful, in its own
way.

~~~
et-al
That's an interesting idea. There's something very raw about those
university.edu/department/~username pages that existed with the most basic of
HTML--unstyled tables, blue anchor links, images only when you needed them,
and almost no Yavascript.

That rawness, without too many attribute tags let alone CSS, _is_ brutalist.

~~~
kirkules
Btw, the university pages you mention are still extremely common, at least in
mathematics-related fields

~~~
roywiggins
When I'm searching for info on something, if I land on a page with no styling
and no multimedia beyond hypertext and images, I know I've hit something good
because it's almost certainly an academic's personal page!

------
whack
Ironically enough, WaPo has an entire article about the brutalist trend in
web-design, and the very first example they give is Hacker News.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
intersect/wp/2016/05...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
intersect/wp/2016/05/09/the-hottest-trend-in-web-design-is-intentionally-ugly-
unusable-sites/?utm_term=.91eae9d7140c)

~~~
alexandercrohde
Pretty sure HN is brutalism (along with CL, and possible even google). I don't
imagine a designer was hired at all for the process.

~~~
Bartweiss
It's funny - I accept HN as brutalism, but not poor design. (Though I doubt a
designer was hired.)

The color scheme at HN is _superb_ for a website. #FFFFFF on #000000 is
painful to look at, everyone knows that. But most sites have solved the
problem with grey-on-white, or even grey-on-grey. It's hard to anyone to read
and terrible for those with impaired vision. HN chose solid black on a
darkened, but distinctively shaded background. That alone has my lasting
gratitude.

------
JackC
I like brutalist websites because they remind me of those weird passion
projects you find on the web from time to time ...

Netochka Nezvanova [1]

Ted's Caving Page, with the story of his discovery in a local cave [2]

TempleOS [3]

Jon Bois' Future of Football [4]

They have the vibe of one person with a keyboard and a strange dream, and
that's what I love about the web.

I feel weird about a UX design shop critiquing this aesthetic, because they're
such different worlds, and I don't want the professionalized web shutting down
the personal web. But maybe that's the point: web brutalism is a cool, freeing
thing in projects that really are personal, but risks becoming selfish or
self-indulgent when applied to the wrong project.

[1]
[http://web.archive.org/web/20121023110850/http://www.salon.c...](http://web.archive.org/web/20121023110850/http://www.salon.com/2002/03/01/netochka/)
[2]
[http://www.angelfire.com/trek/caver/page1.html](http://www.angelfire.com/trek/caver/page1.html)
[3] [http://www.templeos.org/](http://www.templeos.org/) [4]
[https://www.sbnation.com/a/17776-football](https://www.sbnation.com/a/17776-football)

~~~
quake
TempleOS is one of the strangest projects I've ever seen, and the creator is
likely a schizophrenic, but I'm incredibly impressed that he managed to make
what he did all on his own. I can't claim to have made a compiler from scratch
while on the run from my own hallucinations

~~~
madamelic
He is schizophrenic.

He used to run around on HN but he gets banned pretty quickly apparently. He
might pop in.

------
deepakkarki
Heh, it took me a while to figure out that this class of design was called
"brutalist" by the design folk. I had seen such designs before and wanted to
make a similar themed webpage for my side project. I was frantically searching
the web for "minimalist design", "black and white design", "newspaper/magazine
like web design" etc.

Web link for those interested [https://discoverdev.io](https://discoverdev.io)

~~~
k-mcgrady
Your site seems like a good example of the point of 'brutalist' web design.
People seem to be getting hung up on brutalist architecture having
shortcomings but in the discussions I've seen around 'brutalist' web design
the focus seems to be on getting rid of the pointless background
images/videos, the mountains of useless JS, and having a simpler web page that
is clean, readable, very fast to load, and gets to the point.

~~~
deepakkarki
Yeah! Made sure my page has zero JS. Don't add what you don't need :)

------
have_faith
What comes after brutalism in web design? romanticism? new-sincerity? Button
labels like "I would appreciate it if you clicked me because I generate ad
revenue".

~~~
skummetmaelk
> "I would appreciate it if you clicked me because I generate ad revenue"

This is very likely.

~~~
klez
Years ago I had a website hosted on Altervista. They allowed ads from their
network, but their ToS explicitly forbade adding text to your page that
encouraged readers to click on ads.

Does Google have this too in their ToS?

~~~
PetahNZ
Yea it explicitly says "Publishers may not ask others to click their ads"
along with about 20 other related clauses.

------
gandutraveler
Reddit or HN are best examples of Brutalism.

~~~
acdjuiamadfn
HN?

1) I have no clue who responded to me

2) I cannot even delete my comments while Paul Graham shouts about privacy
from rooftops

HN is not even functional, let alone bruatalist. And the reason is simple-
they will be shredded down because they know it's easy to say things than to
do things.

~~~
christophilus
You can easily see who responded to you by looking at your comments under your
profile.

I can delete my comments... not sure why you wouldn't be able to.

I think HN is about as perfect a site for its purpose as I can think of. It's
fast. It's fast on mobile. It's fast. It has really consistently interesting
links. It has informed conversations that don't generally deteriorate into
childish flamewars. It's hella fast.

~~~
squeaky-clean
You actually can't delete your comments after an hour or so. Try going back
through your profile and deleting any old comment.

~~~
digi_owl
And i kinda like it for it. Over at Reddit i have seen way too many that pop
in, make some kind of comment, and then nuke either the comment or the whole
account after a short while.

~~~
squeaky-clean
Likewise, I hate googling for a discussion or review and finding a thread half
filled with "This user has deleted their comments with a greasemonkey
script..."

Besides, after an hour or so your comment is definitely already in Google and
any HN crawlers, and probably on archive.org shortly after that.

------
bane
It's interesting how the site really reminds me of the GUI design of late 80s
early 90s professional software.

[http://www.guidebookgallery.org/screenshots/win203](http://www.guidebookgallery.org/screenshots/win203)

[http://www.guidebookgallery.org/screenshots/geosapple](http://www.guidebookgallery.org/screenshots/geosapple)

[http://toastytech.com/guis/gem11.html](http://toastytech.com/guis/gem11.html)

~~~
FilterSweep
> It's interesting how the site really reminds me of the GUI design of late
> 80s

Brutalism in America seemed to have begun its decline in the late 80s early
90s as well.

Not sure if this was intended by the creator but its an interesting parallel!

Also, the Brutalist resurgence is interesting. Its not just with the web, I
see plenty of kickstarter projects and other sellers peddling brutalist
artifacts.

~~~
digi_owl
I kinda recall running into a comment from a prominent game dev somewhere,
manybe over at Filfre.net, talking about game development rebooting itself
from the ground up every time new hardware capabilities came available.

Something about how each time new video hardware came available, the first few
years of games would be more elaborate tech demos than actual deep games.

I wonder if something like that can be applied to computing in general. Just
look at how we now throw the GPU at everything, because we can, rather than
stop to ask if we should.

The Linux GUI for example is still riding the ripples of the wobbly windows
and spinning cube that was Compiz. It may have looked good, but was as useful
as wings on an elephant.

------
Numberwang
I don't understand the need for this. Material Design is the pinnacle of human
creation. Everything should be Material Design forever.

~~~
dom0
> pinnacle of human creation

That's wangernumb!

------
geff82
Brutalism is meant to expose the function in a "brute" way, not necessarily to
hurt the eye (yet it does not care). Bad user design might be brutal, but not
Brutalism.

I think "UX/WEB brutalism" should be based on the minimalism that has spread
through the western style web, then taking away some of the
beautifying/graphical elements, yet adding "brutally clear"
navigation/interaction elements (and not hiding them in a hamburger menu, for
example). It should be a pure focus on what is presented (from a content
perspective) and how you can use it. Any form of beauty for beauty's sake
(like nice background pictures, too much graphics, fancy effects...) should be
avoided.

------
chris__butters
You can see brutalism in a lot of late modernist graphic design, which to me
is quite ironic seen as it is usually applied to architecture to be function
first rather than "lets just make this look brutal" \- as with everything this
comes down to the audience.

Brutalism among graphic design is (from my perspective) mainly targeted at the
graphic design elite although when used digitally is targeted at the same as
well as those who can see past the prettiness to achieve what they are looking
to without any issues.

------
artur_makly
what goe around comes around i guess. Myspace i feel was the epitome of ths
so-called "brutalism". worked wonders for them in terms of product
differentiation at a time when the first semblemnce of coherent UX design
standards were appearing on the web.

its great for fringe underground magazines, gamers, music aficionados, and
artists of all kinds.

personally i hope it trends as the general web has become mind numbingly
boring / predictable as fuk.

------
nkkollaw
This sums it up perfectly: "framework for designing brutalist experiences that
your design peers will love".

This style is made for other designers, not users. I often hit the back button
because besides Bloomberg—after they tweaked it to be less extreme—brutalist
websites are absolutely unusable and a nightmare to use. Also, they just seem
broken and that reflect bad on the company.

Designers should design for users, not themselves.

------
JoshMnem
It's much better than the accessibility problems (animation, color) that are
fundamentally baked into ideas like Material Design.

------
jansho
I adore UX brutalism.

It's a weird paradox that I enjoy design, but at the same time feel that MOST
(caps necessary here) of them are actually faff and pretentious. I keep coming
back to brutalist style, as the one I feel the least uncomfortable with, and
I'm so glad it's now officially recognised.

(Or maybe give it two years before I start complaining again.)

~~~
digi_owl
What was that saying about design again. That it is done not when nothing more
can be added, but when nothing more can be taken away?

~~~
jansho
Design is also about self-expression of the designer, and solving problems by
way of manufacturing experiences. Sometimes the two conflict at the cost of
the other though.

------
omnimus
Most of the websites labeled as "brutalist" are actually extremely over
designed and are made by very good graphic designers. They are "elite"
bored/over with mainstream view of what is currently considered pretty and
they try to push it further. It's about destroying conservative views.

It's like some sort of experimental technology. Design like this is needed
because thats how inovation and new ideas come back to mainstream design. So
it is not exactly for mainstream audience but for the second wave of designers
liking those unusual ideas, taking pieces of it and putting it back into
mainstream.

I guess it's same process as in music or in computer sciences.

The fact that for past few years this kind of design started to be popular
among the "elite" means that in next few years we might start to see more
websites like reddit and craigslist :)

------
frik
UX and UI brutalism meets in MetroUI/ModernUI of Win8/10, ugly as hell color
schemes and designs. It reminds me of ugly brutalism/"modern architecture"
that was so common in 1960s (prefab buildings).

The Win3x/9x/XP/Vista/7, iOS6 & current macOS/iOS, Android 5+ UI and UX are so
nice.

------
retube
Way better than material

------
jccalhoun
Funny. I just ran across the Brutalist Framework the other day
[http://www.brutalistframework.com/](http://www.brutalistframework.com/) I
still can't tell if it is a joke or not.

~~~
b4ux1t3
It's either a joke or a gross misunderstanding of Brutalism. I mean, it uses
JQuery, for crying out loud. That's not a slight against JQuery, per se, just
saying that "Brutalism" would imply a use of raw materials in construction. To
extend the metaphor, using JQuery would be like using wood over the bare
concrete of a building to make things "better" for the user.

~~~
jccalhoun
I'm inclined to think joke too because although a lot of people thing
brutalist architecture is ugly, it is a specific type of ugly and this doesn't
seem to fit. I'm not an expert though.

On the other hand there does seem to be a framework you can download which
seems like a lot of work for a joke.

------
calebm
Reminds me of a website that seems in this aesthetic, though I would
categorize it as more "David Lynch-esque":
[http://northernground.com/](http://northernground.com/)

------
Bromskloss
If only brutalism would have confined itself to website design, I would be
satisfied.

------
muzani
After a career of developing MVPs, this really clicks with me on a deep level.
This site isn't it though. I do think websites and apps need to be built
really fast and easily, but they still have to look better.

------
tmaly
I liked how the site gave me the feeling that it is like a learn startup type
method of design.

I signed up for the newsletter to just see, and plenty of the previous content
they make available seems intriguing.

------
d--b
The OP assimilates raw aesthetics with neglecting design.

Brutalism is as careful as design can be, only with as little aesthetic tricks
as possible.

------
pc86
> _The secret to great brutalist UX is contrast._

Said on a page with dark grey text on a light grey background.

------
werber
"UX brutalism is a relatively new concept, and we don't expect it to last too
long."

------
mhz
That website had 18 JS warnings on load :/ Isn't it supposed to be highly
functional?

------
rch
If more sites looked like this we probably wouldn't need amp.

------
thefuzz
Would you say
[https://www.technologyreview.com/](https://www.technologyreview.com/) is
brutalist design?

If so, I'd say it's one of my favourite brutalist websites!

------
digitalengineer
>The brutalist persona document aggregates all the assumptions you have about
your users into a single place.

This can't be serious right? Assumptions? What about data & research?

~~~
Sean1708
_> Collecting user feedback as early as possible is crucial to finding flaws
in your users._

I'm gonna go out on a limb and suggest that there is a possibility that it
isn't serious.

------
werber
This reminds me of Butt magazines aesthetic

------
hatsunearu
some (all?) of it isn't brutalism, it seems postmodernist.

------
pesto88
It would be nice if they used CSS for all the examples

------
stillhere
Regarding brutalism: I think Prince Charles said it best, "You have to give
this much to the Luftwaffe. When it knocked down our buildings, it didn't
replace them with anything more offensive than rubble."

------
ianyang
I can't think of anything I hate more.

~~~
eeZah7Ux
Making things ugly on purpose and calling it a feature.

~~~
blunte
Trying to make things pretty and slick, but adding 20x to page weight and
making the page nearly unusable. That's worse.

