4 ms·
If you look at this backwards, brutalist web design is not a merely “back to basic” because at dawn of the web there was no CSS, neither JS and very little tool
by achairapart 8y ago
If you look at this backwards, brutalist web design is not a merely “back to basic” because at dawn of the web there was no CSS, neither JS and very little tools at your disposal.
HTML pages back then looked too brutal to our eyes, so we visually borrowed from what it was more aesthetically close: Print Design.
We used data tables to design layouts. We used print design tools (PhotoShop, etc) to design shapes, shadows, gradients, custom fonts, even rounded corner (Web 2.0 all-rounded trend came out when browser implemented the border-radius propriety).
Nowadays CSS let us design complex layouts without the need of graphic software. But more than that, in all these years we developed a common “web aesthetic”: Today HTML looks less brutal to our eyes than 27 years ago.
This was true even for photography: it took almost 100 years before it was seen as something else other than an “art for failed painters”.