5 ms·

Why Brutalism is the hottest trend in web design

20 points by mijustin 10y ago

mijustin 10y ago
When I was 13, I remember being blown away by the game Doom. It had a 3D engine, graphics and sound like I'd never seen before. At about 2.25 MB it took 40 minutes on my dial up modem. Nowadays, the average web page is bigger than that. That's insane. I think we're going to see a return to lightweight websites. Simple. Focused on the words.
- chickenfries 10y ago
  I don't get this comparison of Doom to webpages. Doom is a famously well-made classic video game made by an exceptional programmer. John Carmack is not making "the average webpage." Comparing Doom to "the average webpage" makes no sense; they do completely different things. Doom took you 40 minutes to download in 1993, if dial up had been faster, you can bet that Carmack would've shipped a bigger game. Good video games give you the ability to decrease or increase graphical quality to deliver the best experience on variable hardware. As networks, hardware and browsers improve, so will the demands of "the average web page." You can try to convince people that they don't need the things that they've come to expect from the web, or you can work on finding ways to deliver better progressively enhanced websites.
- cylinder 10y ago
  The reason sites aren't lightweight is because the publishers want you to view ads and click on to other internal links to view more ads.
  - fucking_tragedy 10y ago
    Also, front-end frameworks and thousands of lines of unnecessary Javascript.
ommunist 10y ago
A web page, where all the useful information is in sound files, that I have to download and listen up to? That is indeed brutal. I can read 10x time faster than listen. Please put the wording to text. Save my time. Besides text files are much more compact than audio files.
officialchicken 10y ago
Béton brut[0] is great for defensive structures or creating a sense of massiveness or permanence. It is quite literally 'brutal' due to the 'visual weight' of the l'object du art. There are real technology innovations in the casting of concrete and concrete construction techniques (continuous casting, on-site rebar formation, etc) used in this style. Where is the unseen innovation in these web sites? Where is the heaviness, permanence, and sense of longevity? I'd argue it's really just high-contrast minimalism, with an emphasis on laziness. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%A9ton_brut https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%A9ton_brut

20 points by mijustin 10y ago

When I was 13, I remember being blown away by the game Doom. It had a 3D engine, graphics and sound like I'd never seen before. At about 2.25 MB it took 40 minutes on my dial up modem. Nowadays, the average web page is bigger than that. That's insane. I think we're going to see a return to lightweight websites. Simple. Focused on the words.

chickenfries 10y ago
I don't get this comparison of Doom to webpages. Doom is a famously well-made classic video game made by an exceptional programmer. John Carmack is not making "the average webpage." Comparing Doom to "the average webpage" makes no sense; they do completely different things. Doom took you 40 minutes to download in 1993, if dial up had been faster, you can bet that Carmack would've shipped a bigger game. Good video games give you the ability to decrease or increase graphical quality to deliver the best experience on variable hardware. As networks, hardware and browsers improve, so will the demands of "the average web page." You can try to convince people that they don't need the things that they've come to expect from the web, or you can work on finding ways to deliver better progressively enhanced websites.
cylinder 10y ago
The reason sites aren't lightweight is because the publishers want you to view ads and click on to other internal links to view more ads.
- fucking_tragedy 10y ago
  Also, front-end frameworks and thousands of lines of unnecessary Javascript.

ommunist 10y ago

A web page, where all the useful information is in sound files, that I have to download and listen up to? That is indeed brutal. I can read 10x time faster than listen. Please put the wording to text. Save my time. Besides text files are much more compact than audio files.

officialchicken 10y ago

Béton brut[0] is great for defensive structures or creating a sense of massiveness or permanence. It is quite literally 'brutal' due to the 'visual weight' of the l'object du art. There are real technology innovations in the casting of concrete and concrete construction techniques (continuous casting, on-site rebar formation, etc) used in this style. Where is the unseen innovation in these web sites? Where is the heaviness, permanence, and sense of longevity? I'd argue it's really just high-contrast minimalism, with an emphasis on laziness. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%A9ton_brut https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%A9ton_brut