What is Brutalist web design?

Brutalism originated from modern architecture in the 1950s. After the second World War, architects planned to reconstruct the ruined cities fast. The main feature of brutalist architecture is minimal functioning construction showing bare building material without decoration.

Long time ago, web design was all about fancy. Designers applied abundant decoration which was bandwidth demanding. From the mobile era, this fancy web design was no longer appropriate and was replaced by minimalism. Less is more, this is the norm today for web design.

Brutalism is one school of minimalist web design in 2020. Web page consists of grids and pure content only. It looks like a skeleton often. Maybe you will ask, “is it web design anymore?”. Remember the thumb rule of design: “Design is not only about how it looks, it is about how it works.” Users should have the final judgement.

Let us show you some famous brutalist websites.

Wikipedia

The first showcase is Wikipedia that helps millions of people to look for knowledge with collective intelligence. The website appears as black grid and white background without excess decoration. No users think Wikipedia useless due to this brutalist web design.

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/

Balenciaga

The brand Balenciaga is exceptional in fashion design, so to its web design. The homepage shows 3 grids only: Men, women, all. Nothing more will distract users from the fashion categories. Pick and shop, this is how an extreme brutalism works.

Balenciaga: https://www.balenciaga.com/

Bloomberg

Famous for its professionalism, the Bloomberg News applies brutalism in its homepage web design. Only photos and banners are colourful and the skeleton is black and white.

Bloomberg: https://www.bloomberg.com/

It is difficult to find brutalist web design in Hong Kong. pnetform web design company drills into state-of-the-art design and technology from different web design schools. Please contact pnetfrom for more information of web design. ([email protected])