I'm planning a few changes pending feedback right now:

- Removing the glitch navigation on the top nav bar. People seem to think it's too annoying, and I will concede it's not technically Brutalist although it only takes a few lines of CSS

- Changing the default theme to one of the greyscale themes, which are easier to read and arguably more functionally brutalist, and more aligned with the aesthetics of concrete Brutalist architecture - Better handling of back button on Android devices - A color theme inspired by Windows 3.1

To address concerns about whether this design is truly brutalist I recommend first revisiting the principles of Brutalist Web Design, as well as more contemporary usages of the term.

The most notable description was set forth by David Bryant Copeland (see https://brutalist-web.design):

- Content is readable on all reasonable screens and devices.

- Only hyperlinks and buttons respond to clicks.

- Hyperlinks are underlined and buttons look like buttons.

- The back button works as expected.

- View content by scrolling.

- Decoration when needed and no unrelated content.

- Performance is a feature.

Another common interpretation of brutalism is aesthetic, reacting to overly complicated user interfaces by creating simpler, more direct ones. Tailwind CSS (https://tailwindcss.com), one of today's most popular CSS libraries, promotes this approach in its component examples. There's also a neat library I've seen recently called "Neobrutalism Components" for React that I like (https://neobrutalism-components.vercel.app), providing components with a similar look and feel to Gumroad. This might more accurately be called 'Neo-Brutalism,' as noted in the comments.

A more engineering-centric interpretation of Brutalism focuses on form, structure, and efficiency, drawing significantly from brutalist architecture principles. Apart from the user interface itself, most mobile, desktop, and web applications are extremely bloated and often perform worse than sites from 10 years ago did. While one HTML file might be "less brutalist" than the original HN site, it is substantially more brutalist than any HN mobile app in existence, and offers nearly identical functionality.

A broader interpretation of brutalism, which could be termed 'Meta-Brutalism,' is embodied in the overall experience on this site through UX flows. Yes, in the strictest sense, the original HN site is more Brutalist in many ways, but it only shows 30 articles at a time and does not function as a PWA. For this site, the experience of reading 10 stories is arguably less brutalist, but for quickly browsing through several pages and skimming articles (which is how I read HN) it is a lot faster, and in my opinion, more Brutalist.

My primary inspiration was addressing software and tool bloat in UIs rather than strictly adhering to every principle set forth by David Bryant Copeland. I don't find it convincing that this site "isn't brutalist" compared to really any other experience apart from the Main HN site, and I would argue the overall experience is more brutalist in its performance and scrolling behavior.

As a side note: I generally don't like Brutalist architecture that much although I believe it is unfairly maligned. I visited the Salk Institute once and enjoyed it though (https://www.archdaily.com/61288/ad-classics-salk-institute-l...).

> My primary inspiration was addressing software and tool bloat in UIs rather than strictly adhering to every principle set forth by David Bryant Copeland.

You could have made it faster and less bloated in just plain HTML, an entirely unecesary level of bloat for a page like this. Your page makes 71(!) requests (compared to HNs 7) and is about ~158kB of data, not far of 3x more data than HN.

You've made something, but not something brutalist, performant or bloat free.

contradicts with brutalism IMO. like someone already said, brutalism is when form follows function and without much frivolity, and one of the functions of a website is being usable by loading smooth and fast (the wingdings are not it).

this is not necessarily a dunk on you, this is more of a dunk on David Bryant Copeland; I'm really sick of developers and programmers who co-opt design movements or other design-adjacent terms, make up a definition or principles that seem like they could fit but then fail when inspected closely. Someone here already mentioned Gumroad as an example of (neo) brutalist web design; Figma is another great example. The sites here https://brutalistwebsites.com/ are great typography-driven examples. This could even count as brutalist https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/ especially because their goal, as a site running on solar power, is to be as well performing (and low bloat) as possible while still satisfying expectations of functionality.

I think my advice to you would be, look outside of the developer/programmer sphere when building out design. Brutalism is not only "the least lines of code", it's also a lot about intention when it comes to function, and then, form.

It may be nearer to brutalist than nearly every other site out there, but to call The submission brutalist would remove most meaning from the term. I don’t know what the magical threshold is for something to be brutalist, but this ain’t it, I think. If adhering to principles of brutalism wasn’t a priority, why label it that?

This is a lot more brutalist than needing to download an app from a restricted App Store that one can’t view the source code of without trusting a 3rd party

I built this really as a cross platform reader tailored to how I personally read HN

Hmm on Android it doesn't. Chrome on Samsung galaxy note. I am using the standard built-in back gesture/button on bottom right of phone UI. It works on all other sites including of course HN, but it does not take me from comment page back to list page on your site - FYI, FWIW :)

I know the criticism on HN can be brutal, but don't back down. Use it to solidify your stance, not to pander to armchair commenters in the stands, who aren't invested, who aren't playing on the field. Go your own way! Fuck their greyness hahaha! :)

(unless you really want that for you, but do you? Because you created colors. You don't have to be what they say is wrong. They're wrong, because they don't see it. Just because they can't stretch their minds, don't give in. Stay your stance, and you can even consider: that's the way to honor the better part of them, by not giving in to their worst natures, by retaining the opportunity of your original art to stretch their minds.)

You got people losing their minds over a website? You're winning! Don't back down now. Ride that storm!!!

I didn’t no so many people would be offended by this but perhaps that’s a sign that it’s working

I was actually planning on switching to grey already. The colors come from a version of this I made 7 years ago https://minimal-hn.firebaseapp.com/ that this project came out of

I did want to honor the colors of the original project, but I also have genuine concerns with accessibility and would like the default theme to be more accessible. I also like some of the grayscale themes, they remains me somewhat of 80s Macs

So it takes several seconds of gratuitous jank to load the page? Really obnoxious first impression.

By the way, aesthetics are a red herring -- the real brutality here is seeing HN as a naked text headline feed with no signal given on votes, comments, source, even date !!! My bet is it unnerves people who are used to clicking on a fuzzy measure of these things alone so deciding without them is too far out of a comfort zone. It provokes a visceral dread and gets taken out on response times, api calls, and vocabulary.

Stay Brutal! It Rocks !

[1] https://www.cameronsworld.net/

Also, if my site is “wasting electricity” that means every other HN reader is too because that’s how their API works! This is by far the silliest comment I have received!

The whole point of this project is also that there is NOT a server, and the site I created functions as a mobile/tablet/desktop app too

I like the idea though.

http://contemporary-home-computing.org/prof-dr-style/

You can see all of the code in the GitHub repo, which is contained in one file. There aren't even any dependencies

Some kind of manifesto.

Arguably HN is already pretty brutalist. As a second exemplar, I consider https://brutaldon.org pretty brutalist.

It seems plausible that you can't be brutalist and be inaccessible without javascript enabled.

It seems plausible that themes are the antithesis of brutalism. The point is to show the underlying structure. Not to add pretend structure.

... Which in a weird way describes some rather snazzy websites with inconsistent content policies and Kafkaesque appeals.

Since it's hidden, it's a kind of cryptobrutalism, to (perhaps unnecessarily) coin a new term.

This specific website we’re discussing is actually quite full of flourishes, and so not brutalist in the architectural sense.

I don’t really see that site as really brutalism even in this sense. If anything, it hews a lot closer to the Small Web, such as what one might find in Gemini space.

But this is a bit of a charicature of brutalism. In reality it does consider human experience, but it perhaps values different aspects of it. Brutalist paces are built to facilitate flows of people, to make it easy to get done what you need to. But it is also a reaction to traditional architecture styles which carries with them a lot of baggage: often certain social structures such as stratification, empire, patriarchy, racial inequality, etc. When we consider brutalism as an act of opposition to these, the humanistic intent behind it shines through, even though it make the building no more appealing.

Brutalist spaces can in my opinion be welcoming and inviting if furnished correctly. To me they have a nostalgic and hopeful connotation because I walked through them growing up. Nowadays they're a refreshing change from the kind of corporate glass and plastered concrete spaces of today.

So kind of like the positive-spin version of "this entity doesn't care who you are", in that it has no particular bias or judgement.

The mastodon client was OK.

“The Shortcut

$100 PlayStation gift card deal, Disney+ password crackdown, New Matrix movie, Budget AirPods, Samsung TVs [10h]”

(Hn saving you from all the emoji in that headline too…)

Sure, RSS readers do still exist, but they are anything other than brutalist. Janky UI/UX combined with rent-seeking subscription models, ultimately doing little or nothing that your native client couldn't have done.

Don't get me started on the fact that apps like Feedly are now trying to add AI/ML to the mix, entirely missing the point that if I'm using an RSS reader it's because I want to be the one to choose what I read and how.

Then even if all of that wasn't an issue, most publications wouldn't want to make it any easier to avoid their advertising and tracking interactions.

Not to say I don't like the work here but it's definitely more about esthetic in my opinion

A German hackers blog, he wrote the webserver behind it himself. The styling is as brutalist as it gets. And it just works.

This is my goto "do I have access to the internet"-website because it is so damn fast.

But it doesn't call it into question! It only expands the historical tapestry of what they're already a part of. It enriches it! But perhaps it enriches it in ways they don't like? That's ok. You don't have to like every work. It's not a flag you march under, but a big house. But perhaps so big as to be unmanageably incomprehensible, at a glance. So there's confusion - but where isn't there? But what can be said to be different of any encompassing human endeavour? The multitudes, highly differentiated, multi faceted. And would you really want to call yourself part of something that doesn't have that richness and that depth?

Works like this, that stretch the historical tapestry, only enrich your own works that are part of the same. They don't diminish them, they only make them part of something bigger. You may not like them, but nevertheless you benefit from them. By trying to restrict the living definition of brutalism to something less, you end up only diminishing your own work. Celebrate the differences, even if you dislike them, I suppose. Tho it may be jagged little bitter and colorful pill to swallow. Hahaha! :)

"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/ 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.

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://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Brutalism

e: ah, in this very thread https://secretgeek.github.io/html_wysiwyg/html.html

Umm...the French word you're looking for is "beton". The rest of the thread has plenty of (correct) definitions of "brut" for reference.

gumroad is one of the most popular examples: https://gumroad.com/

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.

Otherwise, I was more concerned with the approach to software development and bloat

> incorporate elements of glitch, retro, video-game saturated colors

This doesn't seem related to the ethos of "real" brutalism, nor Neo-brutalism.

> modernslick web design, these creations invoke something similar to the spirit of brutalist.

How? Because people generally find them unappealing?

Brutalism is a minimalist movement characterized by showing the raw construction and function over superfluous elements and design flourishes.

Neo-brutalism is a similarly minimalist design style that focuses more on color and layout, but caries with it the simple and clear construction, with simple shapes and typography.

Adding "glitch" and retro video game references seems directly opposed to the core intent of both movements, both the minimalist nature, and the shying away from superfluous decorations. Even the user of Emoji iconography instead of plain text is non-brutalist. Neo-brutalism the re-imaginated design movement carries the original ethos with its focus on the raw elements that make up the design (eg. typography) over decoration. The classic gumroad example is a perfect demonstration - clear, focused typography, boxes with simple, stark borders to delimit various UI elements, etc.

I feel like I can say this because I'm Gen-Z, and not some old man yelling at the clouds, but let's not use the name of random styles to reference new and unrelated styles.

Can it not be more than what you imagine it to be? Can it not grow with the times? Can its forms not adapt? Its definition not encompass more than what was previously imagined?

Or do you believe it be like "the static dictionary" of art history? where everything, once established, remains unaltered forever? To me, that seems kind of ahistorical, things change and grow. Isn't that what's going on here? Hahaha! :) I think it is!

Things can grow and change, and language especially can change too. But even as things change, language is still used to convey meaning, and if words can be used to mean anything at any time, it no longer becomes a tool to convey meaning. Maybe one day we’ll say the color of the sky is “green”. But the first guy to point to the sky and call it “green” should expect a lot of people telling him that actually it’s “blue”. Isn't that what's going on here? Hahaha! :) I think it is!

On a more serious and academic note, things change, and styles and movements and definitions change. This is known and accepted, and not really the goal of this debate. But styles and movements are defined by a collective, they’re contemporary to a time and place and group of people. One guy self-labeling his work on HN is not the evolution of a movement. Movements are defined by a group of people working together (or at least interacting) to define their movement. There is a social discourse amongst them, and collective understanding - even if it changes over time.

Neo-brutalism is a movement that is happening now, across the internet, by a lot of people. It is distinct from the 1950s brutalism (hence the new name). Most of those people have clear and overlapping idea of what they’re creating - many literally publish goals and definitions of what it means to them. Those people are the ones engaging in a contemporary discourse around design and style, and defining their movement… while a lone HN post is using their name but not their discourse.

My hometown, Toronto, is rather infamous for its fondness of brutalism: https://www.instagram.com/torontobrutalist/ I personally used to always hate it but some of it has grown on me.

Would love to see a terminal/TUI version of this

This would be a bit hard to render in a terminal but a terminal browser like Lynx (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynx_(web_browser)) might work for this site

I don’t really care that much about mixing and matching terms or really see how it’s important. I had fun building something I liked! Adding cyberpunk elements actually hides a lot of the jank inherent from loading every story from the HN API async and makes it look intentional, if somewhat kitch.

The broader argument here seems to be that brutalism needs to be a simple html page with minimal styling (like Craigslist). The thing is, this style in itself is somewhat kitch in the sense it is anachronistic and useless to most users. JavaScript has won so thoroughly, and improved so much, that I don’t see this so roach as useful behind very simple static content

Using open web standards to their full potential (including JavaScript) is much more brutalist, with the possible corollary that “neo-brutalism” might technically be more accurate

The other thing is, HN is only a static site and doesn’t function as an app or PWA There are no comparable cross platform HN headers that can be installed as mobile or desktop apps written in 4000 likes of code Also, the user can also easily change the code itself fairly easily if they would like to change any behavior reply

It also doesn’t depend on walled platform App Store to install where users can inspect the source code Anyone can install this without restriction, easily understand what the program does if they’re vaguely technical, and change it as they please reply

Author; great work! Keep making things and you’ll figure the rest out along the way. No I wouldn’t buy or use it but I see the effort and potential you put in. Don’t stop.

Marcus Tullius Cicero, 1st century BCE

The is nothing new under the sun.

When this happens you can click the up arrow to A) open in new tab if in browser or B) open in in browser window if browsing as mobile or desktop app from PWA

A brutalist site would probably just use the default browser or user styles.

I would also bet it uses JavaScript for the "hyperlinks" but haven't checked.

https://secretgeek.github.io/html_wysiwyg/html.html

https://klikkentheke.com is a great directory of minimalist brutalist typographically driven websites.

Yours feels a little like a retro hacker UI.

By not being minimal, it's it's more "minimal" than they intended.

What's that? Why yes, I do browse without Javascript. HN original works fine without it.

I wasn’t really interested in catering to the 0.00001% of users who disable Javascript. I like the standards of the open web and think they’re worth building on.

While imperfect, there’s nothing comparable in building cross platform applications that are also secure, easy to develop for, easy to release, easily capable of being audited

* It's cross platform and doesn't need to be installed on any device.

* It doesn't need to be “audited”. It's secure. It's easy to develop for. It's laughably easy to release.

* You weren't interested in accessibility, or people with bandwidth restrictions or connection problems, or who are just tired of the relentless firehose of shit that comes in on the “javascript” channel.

The real shame though isn’t that the website is misnamed, it’s that it provides an objectively worse browsing experience than the original HN

It has more Javascript and the back button doesn't work. So, compared to this, the original Hacker News is actually Brutalist.

Maybe I don't get it.

Now, a color must be picked when you make a website, and it doesn't have to look grey, as pixels do not have an inherent color, unlike real world materials, such as concrete, wood or metals. But if you add useless animations (that glitchy thing at the top is obnoxious) that exist solely for the purpose of looking cool and not aid with understanding the UI, you are doing the absolute opposite of brutalism: form over function. This HN 'app' is several times worse to actually use over plain HN. It's not more legible, it's distracting, it breaks the back button etc.

I wouldn't call this "appropriation of brutalism" but "misunderstanding of brutalism".

It is definitely not ""antiquated"" to care about usability and removing distractions.

Browser defaults are the inherent form of a website. Picking a color yourself is adding ornamentation.

But you cannot distinguish between an artist appropriating and misunderstanding unless you know their level of understanding, that's your limit of understanding.

So I think you need to be generous and say, "Well it could cut either way, but they're probably reappropriating it"

There's also the idea that an individual artist could be unconscious of the historic perspective -- which is okay -- but part of a movement that is conscious of that, and are, together, reappropriating that historic perspectives.

I think all of these things are happening here, but with this artist I think they're aware of this stuff - not that i care, because I'm not judging their ability to participate in art/creation or the history of brutalism based on my grading of their knowledge of art history - haha! :)

But whatever you want to lock that definition of brutalism into -- and I appreciate your perspective -- it seems that a 'brutalist' definition of brutalism would be very pared back, rather than decorative with elaborately overly specific and burdensome definitions - ha! :) not that I'm saying yours is that -- what I'm saying is brutalism's brutalist definition would be practical and incorporate the realities of how artists' work and incorporate and reinterpret historical experience over time. Would it not? Wouldn't that be in the spirit of brutalism? Or do you hope brutalism dies in a particular invocation in the past, and is always stuck there, locked to its historical forms?

I think the best way to honor it is to let it grow with the times. And I think that's what's going on here. In fact the tension created by this work, speaks I think to how much it does reference the historical territory of brutalism, and the experience invoked by that -- because were it not operating within that territory, it's unlikely so many would-be brutalists on this thread, would feel so threatened by it as to become territorial. In other words, if all it was doing was throwing the word on there lightly, with no substance, there'd be barely a whimper. It would have no impact. The fact that it's resonated indicates it's doing much more than that. Would you not say so?

It has to have, for it to have caused this lively debate about the nature of brutalism itself. This is a good thing! Hahaha! :)

To me there's no "brutalist experience" involved here, and what you describe doesn't seem to align in any way at all to the spirit of the original use.

I guess...is it impossible for you to look through the lens that perhaps there is something brutalist about it?

Usability and readability first!

No joke