Ask HN: Inspired web designs that aren't overdone, but also not overly-brutalist

Every website these days either:

1. looks the exact same; I assume because they all hire the same designers who read the same design-blogs and uses the exact same libraries (bright colors, rounded corners and amorphous blob people [1] anyone?)

2. Belongs to a creative agency that hacks together some comical monstrosity held together by duct-tape [2] because its a show-piece but is not extendable, flexible or particularly robust (i.e. most of the attributes we'd associate with "quality engineering")

At the same time, I feel like HN's ideal of a website [3] (based on prior ask HN threads) is something comically brutalist thats more snobbish affectation than actually trying to appeal to society at large.

Given these two boundaries, has anybody ever encountered any inspired design for websites that's just... well made?

---

[1] https://dt2sdf0db8zob.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/buffer-overview1-1.png

[2] https://www.samuelday.de/

[3] https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/

5 comments

[ 0.27 ms ] story [ 28.4 ms ] thread

nickelcitymario 5y ago ↗

I'm a big fan of typographically-driven design. One of the benefits is small file sizes and fewer network calls.

Here are a few of my favourites, although they may be getting a little dated now:

https://www.subtraction.com

https://ia.net/writer

http://webtypography.net

http://paperbackauthor.com [1]

---

[1] This one is actually for my own work-in-progress.

asjldkfin 5y ago ↗

This is good stuff, let me add a few you might be interested in:

- https://www.justinobeirne.com/

- https://clar.dev/en/ (This one is kinda over-done, but it's quite performant, and I do like its use of type)

nickelcitymario 5y ago ↗

Despite how extremely minimalist it is, I really like the look of justinobeirne.com. Thanks for sharing these!

mg5150 5y ago ↗

I think this[1] is a good compromise between excessively brutalist websites like the one you mentioned or Zain Amro's site[2] and blogs pretending to be SPAs built with stuff like Bootstrap or Gatsby. Yes, I think React as a static site generator is overkill. But I'm old, and I don't see why a personal website should "appeal to society at large". Society at large isn't paying for domain registration or hosting, and they certainly aren't maintaining the site.

[1] https://bestmotherfucking.website/

[2] https://zainamro.com/

asjldkfin 5y ago ↗

Well, keep in mind the ask doesn't relate to personal websites.

I didn't want to put a specific boundary on the type of website, but really, I'm most interested in commercial websites; since they have the most need to strike a balance between appeal and quality engineering.