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I feel the original HN is much more brutalist than this demo. Bold colors and saturated gradients are not at all a part of that artistic movement. "Brutalist b
by sph 3y ago
I feel the original HN is much more brutalist than this demo. Bold colors and saturated gradients are not at all a part of that artistic movement.
"Brutalist buildings are characterised by minimalist constructions that showcase the bare building materials and structural elements over decorative design." says Wikipedia. The closest thing to this definition is the original https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ and not one of its later variations.
One day I did some contract work at Giorgio Armani's offices in Milan, and, ignorant of brutalism, I thought it was the ugliest building I've ever been in. The entire interior was naked grey concrete. The floor, walls, ceiling. Everything was grey concrete. Now I know that it was brutalist in design, and as an art style it usually is pretty ugly, bare and quite gray.
- hyperorca 3y agoI agree. On reading 'brutalist', I thought it would be grey, or purely black and white, more "concrete" and slightly depressing.
- chatmasta 3y agoI’ve always thought of brutalism as the ultimate “function over form.” It’s brutal in the sense that it “brutally” strips away the form until all that’s left is the function. It’s like minimalism without the vanity.
- tmountain 3y agoI have been operating with the same working definition for a long time. I think the author is misusing the term.
- unavoidable 3y agoBrutalism actually comes from the French word for concrete, "beton brut"; not English "brutality". https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Brutalism https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Brutalism
- retrac 3y agoUnfinished concrete, specifically. I would translate "brut" as "bare" or "unrefined" here. English brutality is related to French brut, but in French it means more like crude, unrefined, raw, blunt, with no particular sense of animalistic or violent.
- omneity 3y agoBrut is raw. Brute or brutal is related to violence.
- bongobingo1 3y agoPerhaps we should be right-click->view-source'ing for the true brutalist experience. e: ah, in this very thread https://secretgeek.github.io/html_wysiwyg/html.html https://secretgeek.github.io/html_wysiwyg/html.html
- sph 3y agoSee also https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%A9ton_brut https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%A9ton_brut
- wongarsu 3y agoIt's called brutalism because brute is the French word for concrete. To many being made out of concrete would be a defining feature of brutalism, to others it's the exposed building materials without façade.
- mikestew 3y agoIt's called brutalism because brute is the French word for concrete. Umm...the French word you're looking for is "beton". The rest of the thread has plenty of (correct) definitions of "brut" for reference.
- thornewolf 3y agoThe design style is more accurately labeled "neo-brutalism", which is characterized by these bold colors. gumroad is one of the most popular examples: https://gumroad.com/ https://gumroad.com/
- vineyardmike 3y agoNeo-Brutalism is an accurate way to describe GumRoad's design, but not the OP. Neobrutalism adds color and bold design to brutalism, but maintains the simple focus on structure and function. NB features prominent and simple shapes to delimit UI elements and buttons, and bold and prominent typography. NB is not "Retro" nor "cyberpunk", and it doesn't add in superfluous details and decorative elements. You wouldn't use Emoji in NB when a simple bit of plaintext would do. Good for the OP for working hard to create something very fun and unique, but it is not Brutalism nor NeoBrutalism.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- wkyleg 3y agoI was a little loose with definitions but wanted something aesthetically similar to a site like Gumroad or Tailwind in terms of Neo-brutalism Otherwise, I was more concerned with the approach to software development and bloat
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- imp0cat 3y agoAgreed. And I really wanted to like it. I guess the weird colors are the glitch + cyberpunk influence?
- keepamovin 3y agoThis is true from the 'looking back' point of view of how the term's been used in the past, but there's currently a re-appropriation of brutalist experience re-interpreted by a younger, forward looking very creative movement producing these types of experiences that incorporate elements of glitch, retro, video-game saturated colors. You can understand it a bit by seeing how compared to modernslick web design, these creations invoke something similar to the spirit of brutalist.
- drivingmenuts 3y agoNo, not at all. If anything, the flashy, glitchy BS seems pretty anti-brutalist. Brutalism is about functionality, pure and simple. It doesn’t have decorative elements. It’s not cool,except in temperature. It doesn’t have to be ugly, but the beauty of brutalism is minimalist, at best.
- maxglute 3y agoLabel is being re-appropriated, IMO doesn't make a lot of sense when it goes against core tenets. But alot of GenZ aesthetic are fun, but their naming hardly makes sense, or doesn't even try to with the iconography/typography being used. It's mostly vibes or labelling for the sake of categorization. See Frutiger Aero.
- drivingmenuts 3y agoWhatever. It's fine as long as they don't get upset when we ignore their clearly misguided labeling and hand them a dictionary to look up "brutalism".
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- wkyleg 3y agoI think my definition is better and much more inline with what most users want and how open web standards actually work Pure HTML sites with no JavaScript are to archaic and web technologies have improved significantly. A better standard of comparison is current HN mobile and desktop apps, or other popular websites that use large frameworks and obscure their functionality to end users Beyond this, I made a HN reader for the way I personally browse HN with absolute minimal lines of code and maximal cross platform utility so I can use this on desktop, mobile, my iPad, etc. I really don’t care that much about adhering to pedantic definitions of brutalism and a lot more about making something that I like using
- retrac 3y agoWhen it works, it's not ugly but, vaguely inhuman and austere. A kind of modern Gothic, like a medieval cathedral, overwhelming with dread and awe. Perhaps unsurprisingly it's quite a popular style for modern cathedrals, as well as courthouses, etc. My hometown, Toronto, is rather infamous for its fondness of brutalism: https://www.instagram.com/torontobrutalist/ https://www.instagram.com/torontobrutalist/ I personally used to always hate it but some of it has grown on me.
- julianeon 3y agoIt's funny that Toronto is a stronghold for brutalism, because if I had to name the most beautiful Canadian city, it would be Toronto.
- someoldgit 3y agoI always liked the UofT Library.
- epolanski 3y agoBut that's brutalist "web design" not architecture.
- wongarsu 3y agoIf somebody had asked me what design movement this was inspired by, my first answer would have been that it's an interpretation of Frutiger Aero [1] through the lens of Windows 3.1. But if you change the theme to grayscale I can kind of see the connection to brutalism. The visible div borders around every comment are bare structural elements, and the huge skeuomorphic buttons are certainly closer to brutalism than HN's UI. HN is about the UI being minimalistic and muted, out of the way to the point of being nearly invisible. Brutalism on the other hand is about a kind of in-your-face minimalism, which this version does capture in a way. 1 https://aesthetics.fandom.com/wiki/Frutiger_Aero https://aesthetics.fandom.com/wiki/Frutiger_Aero
- wkyleg 3y agoYes, I am going to change the default theme to greyscale
- keepamovin 3y agoDo what you want but please don't do it because they're criticizing you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtvjbmoDx-I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtvjbmoDx-I