On Brutalism

I keep coming back to brutalism.

Not the architecture (though I love it too), but the web design movement that rejects the soft, rounded, beige-gradient homogeneity that most of the internet has drifted into.

Brutalism on the web is honest. It shows you the structure. It uses the defaults. It doesn’t pretend to be a product when it’s a person.

Rules I’m following here

1. Black and white only. Color is a commitment. I don’t want to commit yet.
2. Sharp corners. Rounded corners imply softness, approachability, product-ness. I want none of that.
3. Monospaced metadata. Dates, tags, nav — the things that aren’t the content — get the typewriter treatment.
4. Thick borders. Three pixels minimum. Six where it counts.
5. No shadows, no gradients, no blurs. The UI layer is flat. The content is the thing.

Rules I’m breaking

Real brutalism would use Times New Roman and default link blue. I chose Helvetica and kept everything black. So this is brutalism-adjacent. Brutalism with taste. Brutalism that still wants to be read.

That’s a compromise, but it’s mine.