How brutalist design is taking over the internet
T
he term brutalist web design was first coined by Pascal Deville, a founder of the brutalistwebsites.com. Even if you’ve never heard of this term, I bet you’ve probably visited a few brutalist websites without even knowing. Here’s how Deville defines a brutalist website:
“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 today’s web design.”
When designing a brutalist website, aesthetic beauty is not even the fifth thing on your mind. This is probably good news for full stack developers who aren’t big fans of front-end. Nonetheless, there is still a difference between a poorly designed website and a brutalist website. The difference is that brutalist websites are ugly on purpose.
Brutalist architecture
Brutalism is an architectural style that was very popular from the 1950s up until the 1980s. In particular, institutional or civic buildings adopted this style. There are many reasons for its popularity, but the main one is associated with World War 2. After the devastation created by the war, there was a need to build offices, schools, churches, and other buildings and quickly. Because of the war, cheap concrete and steel were abundant, which are the primary materials used to build brutalist buildings. The affordability and practicality were crucial elements, and so Brutalism slowly took over the big cities of the world. In particular, UK and Eastern European Communist countries.
The main characteristic of these buildings is the celebration of the quality of construction materials and the structural elements used. Look at the National Theatre in London, one can see the inside structure of the building without even entering it. There is something very sincere and honest about it.
The term ‘brutalism’ comes from the French phrase, béton brut which means ‘raw concrete’. These buildings are seen by most people as very unfriendly, ugly, and intimidating. (Does this remind you of something?) For this reason, brutalism is perceived to be one of the most divisive styles in architecture due to the strong emotional response it elicits from people. Also, the fact that it was associated with communism, does not make things any better.
Interestingly, recently there has been a resurgence in interest in brutalism. In the last 5 years, numerous books about brutalism were printed like, How to Love Brutalism, Atlas of Brutalist Architecture, Brutal London, The Art of Brutalism, and many others. On social media, Instagram pages like @brutal_architecture have almost 200,000 followers. Clearly, something is happening. It would be outside of the scope of this article to go into the reasons behind this resurgence, but Brad Dunning from GQ has put an interesting hypothesis which I quite like:
“Brutalism is the techno music of architecture, stark and menacing. Brutalist buildings are expensive to maintain and difficult to destroy. They can’t be easily remodeled or changed, so they tend to stay the way the architect intended. Maybe the movement has come roaring back into style because permanence is particularly attractive in our chaotic and crumbling world.”
I like to think of this resurgence as part of a cycle. There is definitely a reactionary element to it, which means that being surrounded by modern corporate buildings made out of a glass makes these concrete monsters stand out more and maybe even be appreciated.
Back to web design
So, armed with knowledge from architecture, we can put brutalist web design in perspective. Firstly, it is clear why this style of web design is named after the architectural style that literally translates to ‘raw or unfinished concrete’. These websites can evoke very much the same emotions that a brutalist building can. Secondly, the strange appearance of these websites can be also attributed to reactionary attitudes among younger people. I’m going to go even further and suggest that there are even practical reasons for their appearance. Just like brutalist buildings stand out from the rest of the buildings in big cities and therefore garner a lot of curiosity from people, brutalist websites stand out from the rest of modern websites. You’d have to agree that most conventional websites today all look the same. One of the reasons for this is that they are all copying each other and following the same popular trends. There is nothing wrong with that, but this means that it becomes more and more difficult for individual websites to stand out. So this reaction could be fuelled by what I would refer to as a punk attitude of complete disregard to conventional rules to make a statement.
Okay, now you’re probably wondering which features define a brutalist website and how can I spot one in the wild? Matt Stewart of the Creative Momentum has put together a comprehensive list of features which I am going to borrow.
- Black or white backgrounds
- No gradients or shadows
- Overlapping elements
- Lack of symmetry
- Crowded design
- No distinct hierarchy
- Monospaced typography
- One font used throughout
- Contrasting color palette
- Lack of animation
- Sparse imagery
- Simple or non-existent navigation
- Single-page website design
I would say that these are not hard rules that one has to follow to make a brutalist website and a website certainly does not have to check all of these points to be considered a brutalist website. In fact, if we consider the reactionary and punk nature of brutalist websites, making a list of rules would be unwise.
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