Ruggedness and lack of concern
April 18, 2016 6:11 PM Subscribe
Unfinished html?
Exposed stylesheets?
Brushed java?
posted by the man of twists and turns at 6:43 PM on April 18, 2016 [8 favorites]
Exposed stylesheets?
Brushed java?
posted by the man of twists and turns at 6:43 PM on April 18, 2016 [8 favorites]
I particularly enjoy the one where he says he's a digital product designer. (italics in the original)
posted by randomkeystrike at 6:46 PM on April 18, 2016
posted by randomkeystrike at 6:46 PM on April 18, 2016
I've heard of the Drudge Report. Apparently have never actually looked at it before. Is it considered brutalist if you just never updated your website since 1996? Or is that just lazy?
posted by randomkeystrike at 6:48 PM on April 18, 2016 [6 favorites]
posted by randomkeystrike at 6:48 PM on April 18, 2016 [6 favorites]
From my experience with spending three years of grad school in the Brutalist fuck-you of a building known as Wean Hall, a brutalist website would be just a "can't connect" message because no Wifi or 4G signal has ever penetrated those walls.
posted by octothorpe at 6:49 PM on April 18, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by octothorpe at 6:49 PM on April 18, 2016 [3 favorites]
There is a certain "I just got Eric Meyer's Cascading Style Sheets, first edition!" aesthetic going on, but I actually like some of these a lot. Anyone submitted metafilter yet?
posted by rodlymight at 6:51 PM on April 18, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by rodlymight at 6:51 PM on April 18, 2016 [1 favorite]
These are all my jam, and once I have fixed my broken website it will look like them.
posted by Going To Maine at 6:54 PM on April 18, 2016 [4 favorites]
posted by Going To Maine at 6:54 PM on April 18, 2016 [4 favorites]
From my experience with spending three years of grad school in the Brutalist fuck-you of a building known as Wean Hall, a brutalist website would be just a "can't connect" message because no Wifi or 4G signal has ever penetrated those walls.
But, on the plus side, your website also has an impenetrable firewall.
posted by Going To Maine at 6:55 PM on April 18, 2016 [3 favorites]
But, on the plus side, your website also has an impenetrable firewall.
posted by Going To Maine at 6:55 PM on April 18, 2016 [3 favorites]
It takes a certain something to refer to the Drudge Report and Hacker News as a "new generation", that's for sure.
posted by the agents of KAOS at 6:56 PM on April 18, 2016 [4 favorites]
posted by the agents of KAOS at 6:56 PM on April 18, 2016 [4 favorites]
Metafilter doesn't actively wish its users were dead.
posted by bleep at 6:58 PM on April 18, 2016 [6 favorites]
posted by bleep at 6:58 PM on April 18, 2016 [6 favorites]
I think there's a misunderstanding of what "brutalism" is, here. The word doesn't come from brutal as in cruel or brutish, it comes from the French word for "raw", as in the unvarnished rough cut. "Le beton brut", as in, raw concrete. It's not accidental, it's quite deliberate.
There's a difference between something designed towards a raw-materials esthetic and one that hasn't so much been "designed" as assembled by somebody who had no idea what they were doing. "Raw materials" in this case are, say, HTML4 and little or no (or somewhat idiosyncratic) stylesheets. Stuff that's just ugly, though - like the Hacker News site - that doesn't count.
posted by mhoye at 6:59 PM on April 18, 2016 [36 favorites]
There's a difference between something designed towards a raw-materials esthetic and one that hasn't so much been "designed" as assembled by somebody who had no idea what they were doing. "Raw materials" in this case are, say, HTML4 and little or no (or somewhat idiosyncratic) stylesheets. Stuff that's just ugly, though - like the Hacker News site - that doesn't count.
posted by mhoye at 6:59 PM on April 18, 2016 [36 favorites]
In its ruggedness and lack of concern to look comfortable or easy, Brutalism can be seen as a reaction by a younger generation to the lightness, optimism, and frivolity of todays webdesign.
Um, that's not what Brutalism is.
The term originates from the French word for "raw" in the term used by Le Corbusier to describe his choice of material béton brut (raw concrete)
posted by leotrotsky at 7:00 PM on April 18, 2016 [11 favorites]
Um, that's not what Brutalism is.
The term originates from the French word for "raw" in the term used by Le Corbusier to describe his choice of material béton brut (raw concrete)
posted by leotrotsky at 7:00 PM on April 18, 2016 [11 favorites]
jinx
posted by leotrotsky at 7:00 PM on April 18, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by leotrotsky at 7:00 PM on April 18, 2016 [2 favorites]
These interviews are sort of like koans.
(I recently put up my "brutalist" website from 1991 onto an unused domain just for lulz, and didn't expect anything of it. It even had my old resume. What do you know -- I get an email the next day from an (automated) recruiter, and so I'm glad to know that I can get a job at SAIC as Junior Java Developer even with my 1991 skill set)
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 7:00 PM on April 18, 2016 [6 favorites]
(I recently put up my "brutalist" website from 1991 onto an unused domain just for lulz, and didn't expect anything of it. It even had my old resume. What do you know -- I get an email the next day from an (automated) recruiter, and so I'm glad to know that I can get a job at SAIC as Junior Java Developer even with my 1991 skill set)
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 7:00 PM on April 18, 2016 [6 favorites]
Wouldn't metafilter sit gently in this company?
posted by Strange_Robinson at 7:02 PM on April 18, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by Strange_Robinson at 7:02 PM on April 18, 2016 [2 favorites]
Damn, too slow.
On the other hand, I'm kind of enjoying the idea that that might not be the first time that phrases has been used? Jinx, Trotsky! Hah, you owe me an armored division.
posted by mhoye at 7:03 PM on April 18, 2016 [2 favorites]
On the other hand, I'm kind of enjoying the idea that that might not be the first time that phrases has been used? Jinx, Trotsky! Hah, you owe me an armored division.
posted by mhoye at 7:03 PM on April 18, 2016 [2 favorites]
The description phrase is taken from the Wikipedia page on Brutalism.
posted by bleep at 7:04 PM on April 18, 2016
posted by bleep at 7:04 PM on April 18, 2016
I actually kind of prefer this aesthetic to most of what's on the web these days.
posted by kevinbelt at 7:09 PM on April 18, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by kevinbelt at 7:09 PM on April 18, 2016 [3 favorites]
On the one hand, I loled at the Drudge report interview.
On the other hand, http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/web_minimalism/
posted by joeyh at 7:11 PM on April 18, 2016 [1 favorite]
On the other hand, http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/web_minimalism/
posted by joeyh at 7:11 PM on April 18, 2016 [1 favorite]
Is there a real, in-regular-use word/phrase that describes the Web design sensibility of tilde.town, craigslist, and pinboard?
Because I love it and find it deeply comforting. I want the entire internet to look like that.
posted by ryanshepard at 7:11 PM on April 18, 2016 [6 favorites]
Because I love it and find it deeply comforting. I want the entire internet to look like that.
posted by ryanshepard at 7:11 PM on April 18, 2016 [6 favorites]
At least in Boston, there's an attempt to recast brutalism as "heroic" architecture. Does that make Drudge heroic then?
posted by adamg at 7:14 PM on April 18, 2016
posted by adamg at 7:14 PM on April 18, 2016
Craigslist is, for all its faults, a pretty good example of no-nonsense, basic usability. It could certainly be made prettier, made flashier, made more web 3.0, but none of that would make it more useable. Most of what passes for modern design would probably make it less transparently useable.
posted by Thorzdad at 7:15 PM on April 18, 2016 [12 favorites]
posted by Thorzdad at 7:15 PM on April 18, 2016 [12 favorites]
Brutalist architecture is one of those things where the origin of the word is entirely different from the common understanding, and yet both are equally true.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 7:18 PM on April 18, 2016 [15 favorites]
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 7:18 PM on April 18, 2016 [15 favorites]
The origin means "raw" and it is "raw" like being handed an uncooked pumpkin and some flour to eat.
posted by bleep at 7:30 PM on April 18, 2016 [4 favorites]
posted by bleep at 7:30 PM on April 18, 2016 [4 favorites]
>In its ruggedness and lack of concern to look comfortable or easy, Brutalism can be seen as a reaction by a younger generation to the lightness, optimism, and frivolity of todays webdesign.
Wow... he left the apostrophe out of "today's". How rugged.
When ""Brutalism"" turns into the latest Hip Web Design Fad and everything looks like this, these people are gonna be PISSED.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 7:34 PM on April 18, 2016 [1 favorite]
Wow... he left the apostrophe out of "today's". How rugged.
When ""Brutalism"" turns into the latest Hip Web Design Fad and everything looks like this, these people are gonna be PISSED.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 7:34 PM on April 18, 2016 [1 favorite]
This is just a bunch of sites who give zero fucks about web 2.0 and I love it.
posted by the webmistress at 7:36 PM on April 18, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by the webmistress at 7:36 PM on April 18, 2016 [2 favorites]
UNIX: the brutalist operating system
posted by indubitable at 7:38 PM on April 18, 2016 [9 favorites]
posted by indubitable at 7:38 PM on April 18, 2016 [9 favorites]
If the aesthetic can be paired with "does it load fast on an old phone and not pester me with social media links and downloading an app I don't want and won't ever install," it will have gained a fan right here.
posted by doctorfrog at 7:51 PM on April 18, 2016 [11 favorites]
posted by doctorfrog at 7:51 PM on April 18, 2016 [11 favorites]
I can get down with stripping out lots of head and meta tags, dropping javascript, html5 accessibility tags, etc. All sort of in line with lean mobile-first, and maybe even appropriate if the the target audience doesn't require SEO or accessibility.
The thing I can't get over are the horrible typesetting, font pairings, color choices, etc. If you want ironic ugly and hard to use as an aesthetic, then take it farther - most of those are just unusable enough to be annoying.
posted by p3t3 at 7:54 PM on April 18, 2016 [1 favorite]
The thing I can't get over are the horrible typesetting, font pairings, color choices, etc. If you want ironic ugly and hard to use as an aesthetic, then take it farther - most of those are just unusable enough to be annoying.
posted by p3t3 at 7:54 PM on April 18, 2016 [1 favorite]
I think Pinboard may be good example of Brutalist web. It's raw, deliberately unadorned, but still clean and very usable. Sturdy, even.
Daringfireball, oddly enough, should probably also be counted as "brutalist"
posted by Doleful Creature at 7:56 PM on April 18, 2016 [1 favorite]
Daringfireball, oddly enough, should probably also be counted as "brutalist"
posted by Doleful Creature at 7:56 PM on April 18, 2016 [1 favorite]
When ""Brutalism"" turns into the latest Hip Web Design Fad and everything looks like this, these people are gonna be PISSED.
So, as a point of contrast to “Brutalist design”, consider DiS Magazine or pcmusic.info. While seemingly minimal, once you get past the high-level organization to the content you realize that they’re less minimal and more “Nouveau Geocities”: large tacky objects and ugly fonts, randomly strewn about, occasionally with spinning GIFs. (example A, example B.) You’d never mistake them for Web 2.0 but they’re also hardly paired down. Also, they cause my eyes to bleed.
posted by Going To Maine at 8:07 PM on April 18, 2016 [2 favorites]
So, as a point of contrast to “Brutalist design”, consider DiS Magazine or pcmusic.info. While seemingly minimal, once you get past the high-level organization to the content you realize that they’re less minimal and more “Nouveau Geocities”: large tacky objects and ugly fonts, randomly strewn about, occasionally with spinning GIFs. (example A, example B.) You’d never mistake them for Web 2.0 but they’re also hardly paired down. Also, they cause my eyes to bleed.
posted by Going To Maine at 8:07 PM on April 18, 2016 [2 favorites]
if the the target audience doesn't require SEO or accessibility
There is an audience that doesn't require accessibility?
posted by Dr Dracator at 8:10 PM on April 18, 2016 [4 favorites]
There is an audience that doesn't require accessibility?
posted by Dr Dracator at 8:10 PM on April 18, 2016 [4 favorites]
Metafilter doesn't actively wish its users were dead.
I don't know I've had some pretty rough mod encounters over the years.
posted by resurrexit at 8:12 PM on April 18, 2016 [5 favorites]
I don't know I've had some pretty rough mod encounters over the years.
posted by resurrexit at 8:12 PM on April 18, 2016 [5 favorites]
There is an audience that doesn't require accessibility?
Accessibility in the ARIA sense- i.e. usable on text-only devices, navigating via tab, supporting assistive devices, etc.
Now that ARIA is becoming standardized, there's a push for this level of accessibilty, but it does bloat the code a little sometimes. Niche sites or small user base sites may opt to ignore things like accessibility or backwards compatibility though.
posted by p3t3 at 8:19 PM on April 18, 2016 [1 favorite]
Accessibility in the ARIA sense- i.e. usable on text-only devices, navigating via tab, supporting assistive devices, etc.
Now that ARIA is becoming standardized, there's a push for this level of accessibilty, but it does bloat the code a little sometimes. Niche sites or small user base sites may opt to ignore things like accessibility or backwards compatibility though.
posted by p3t3 at 8:19 PM on April 18, 2016 [1 favorite]
This is like the last page of a comic book.
posted by furtive at 8:32 PM on April 18, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by furtive at 8:32 PM on April 18, 2016 [2 favorites]
I just spent a couple of hours at Laurel Schwulst's site. It's truly beautiful to me. Her CV is a Google Sheet. It works.
posted by alpheus at 9:33 PM on April 18, 2016
posted by alpheus at 9:33 PM on April 18, 2016
mhoye: "There's a difference between something designed towards a raw-materials esthetic and one that hasn't so much been 'designed' as assembled by somebody who had no idea what they were doing."
Er - "brutalist" may not be 100% on as a description of these sites - and I'm not so sure it's not - but "assembled by someone who had no idea what they were doing" is pretty thoroughly grossly unfair. My experience is that people like Craig Newmark know exactly what they're doing and are very good at it. Would that the rest of the poorly-designed, hyper-interactive, glossy web 4.0 internet were so well-thought as Craigslist and Metafilter.
posted by koeselitz at 9:43 PM on April 18, 2016 [3 favorites]
Er - "brutalist" may not be 100% on as a description of these sites - and I'm not so sure it's not - but "assembled by someone who had no idea what they were doing" is pretty thoroughly grossly unfair. My experience is that people like Craig Newmark know exactly what they're doing and are very good at it. Would that the rest of the poorly-designed, hyper-interactive, glossy web 4.0 internet were so well-thought as Craigslist and Metafilter.
posted by koeselitz at 9:43 PM on April 18, 2016 [3 favorites]
I'd consider Pop-Ups and Pop-Overs to be the most BRUTAL kind of web design. Most of these are more like primitive design with occasional antique touches (anyone for a web version of Antique Roadshow?).
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:44 PM on April 18, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:44 PM on April 18, 2016 [1 favorite]
I have a site (or 3) that could easily enough be on this list, but I'm also kind of skeptical of the Brutalist framing, I guess.
I'd rather associate them with, I dunno, the Arts & Crafts movement? Midwestern wooden barn architecture? Tree forts? Some hippie in a tent?
posted by brennen at 10:27 PM on April 18, 2016 [2 favorites]
I'd rather associate them with, I dunno, the Arts & Crafts movement? Midwestern wooden barn architecture? Tree forts? Some hippie in a tent?
posted by brennen at 10:27 PM on April 18, 2016 [2 favorites]
Count me in as another whose sites could legit be described as brutalist based on this. I really just need mah links and stuff. Glad to know that my devotion to courier new is now in stylee.
posted by Iteki at 11:01 PM on April 18, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Iteki at 11:01 PM on April 18, 2016 [1 favorite]
Metafilter: Doesn't actively wish its users were dead.
posted by Paul Slade at 12:36 AM on April 19, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by Paul Slade at 12:36 AM on April 19, 2016 [3 favorites]
Anyone remember when Google was considered weirdly old fashioned and anti-design, like this? When we had all gotten used to using Excite and Yahoo? And your Excite or Yahoo "home page" would have your bookmarks, your favorite webcomics, the latest news stores and weather mixed right in with a bunch of stories from The Onion and News of the Weird? Plus sports scores and headlines... and a bunch of flashy obnoxious ads? And we tweaked the layouts and tried to figure out ways to add the more obscure webcomics we were following (or whatever.)
And then along came Google with their serifs and white space and their text-heavy results and we were all like "Haha so primitive, so 1990s. Kinda nice how fast it loads, though." And now I don't even remember my Yahoo password. And the moral of the story is...
posted by OnceUponATime at 2:55 AM on April 19, 2016 [5 favorites]
And then along came Google with their serifs and white space and their text-heavy results and we were all like "Haha so primitive, so 1990s. Kinda nice how fast it loads, though." And now I don't even remember my Yahoo password. And the moral of the story is...
posted by OnceUponATime at 2:55 AM on April 19, 2016 [5 favorites]
I dunno. I consider modern design, all razor sharp edges and right-angles abutting each other and near-primary colors blaring against a bright background to be pretty human hostile. It looks childish and rudimentary. (Metro? Material Design? Looking at you, here.)
posted by Slap*Happy at 5:01 AM on April 19, 2016
posted by Slap*Happy at 5:01 AM on April 19, 2016
So, this is like hipsters discovering Jandek?
posted by davebush at 6:24 AM on April 19, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by davebush at 6:24 AM on April 19, 2016 [1 favorite]
Time to dig out my old Jakob Nielsen books.
posted by JohnFromGR at 6:36 AM on April 19, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by JohnFromGR at 6:36 AM on April 19, 2016 [1 favorite]
Interested in more about what would be a Brutalist website! I love the architecture - it's not designed to be unusable, is it?
So raw textures - references to the visual environment of code or default stylesheets makes sense.
Something about scale? What other characteristics could translate?
posted by lokta at 6:39 AM on April 19, 2016
So raw textures - references to the visual environment of code or default stylesheets makes sense.
Something about scale? What other characteristics could translate?
posted by lokta at 6:39 AM on April 19, 2016
Try brutal Boing Boing.
Psssh. Brutalist MetaFilter
posted by Going To Maine at 7:53 AM on April 19, 2016
Psssh. Brutalist MetaFilter
posted by Going To Maine at 7:53 AM on April 19, 2016
Count me in as a fan of both 60's concrete architecture and simple functional web design.
(Also, I've spent the last hour or so grooving on that very nice Nicolas Jaar mix tape;)
posted by ovvl at 8:25 AM on April 19, 2016
(Also, I've spent the last hour or so grooving on that very nice Nicolas Jaar mix tape;)
posted by ovvl at 8:25 AM on April 19, 2016
Psssh. Brutalist MetaFilter
posted by Thorzdad at 12:06 PM on April 19, 2016 [2 favorites]
The owner of gopher.floodgap.com has configured their website improperly. To protect your information from being stolen, Firefox has not connected to this website.Brutal, dude. Brutal.
posted by Thorzdad at 12:06 PM on April 19, 2016 [2 favorites]
Who likes boxes? Try Nearlyfreespeech.net or Tarsnap.
Interestingly tarsnap recently changed from rectangles to roundrects (old version) and it really changes the feel of the site.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 1:52 PM on April 19, 2016
Interestingly tarsnap recently changed from rectangles to roundrects (old version) and it really changes the feel of the site.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 1:52 PM on April 19, 2016
There two ways to draw on unreconstructed 90s web design trends and both are represented here.
1) minimalist, which traces to the early academic web. Mostly text, some color, boxes maybe. Minimal pictures.
2) maximalist, which is the geocities style. Animation, everything crammed in everywhere, maybe autoplay something, throw up any old thing.
One of these is a lot closer to raw design than the other, but we're conflating them because they're both originally products of a naive design sensibility, directed in different ways. On the other hand, text-oriented minimalism is perfectly defensible and can be made very effective with a little bit of design attention, but geocities maximalism is never going to turn into practical design.
The third category of sites on this list are minimalist sites which aren't based in the mostly-text aesthetic but don't otherwise conform to the dominant web design language of the current day. Websites with minimalist design in the current idiom (like Medium, for example, which in terms of visual design is pretty spare even if it's a mess of JS in the background) do not qualify.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 2:07 PM on April 19, 2016 [1 favorite]
1) minimalist, which traces to the early academic web. Mostly text, some color, boxes maybe. Minimal pictures.
2) maximalist, which is the geocities style. Animation, everything crammed in everywhere, maybe autoplay something, throw up any old thing.
One of these is a lot closer to raw design than the other, but we're conflating them because they're both originally products of a naive design sensibility, directed in different ways. On the other hand, text-oriented minimalism is perfectly defensible and can be made very effective with a little bit of design attention, but geocities maximalism is never going to turn into practical design.
The third category of sites on this list are minimalist sites which aren't based in the mostly-text aesthetic but don't otherwise conform to the dominant web design language of the current day. Websites with minimalist design in the current idiom (like Medium, for example, which in terms of visual design is pretty spare even if it's a mess of JS in the background) do not qualify.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 2:07 PM on April 19, 2016 [1 favorite]
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posted by bleep at 6:38 PM on April 18, 2016 [14 favorites]