Tailwind is the latest bootstrap. These frameworks were designed to allow people with no skill in design/UI to produce something that passed for attractive. Since most clients are more concerned about time and cost than quality and originality, this approach effectively killed bespoke landing pages and led a lot of UI devs to move away from hand-coding styles to glomming on class names and using a "best practice" framework even though they were capable of writing the CSS from scratch. Now LLMs have trained on this boring cookie-cutter UI work so no one should be surprised that this is what comes out.
And for some reason you're describing it as it's a bad thing. I don't care much for tailwind, but bootstrap is still used for intranet applications, and is an excellent pick in that category. Why waste time writing CSS, reimplementing what has been done millions of times before you, when working on an application where function has strict precedence over form? I'd rather listen to users who fill hundreds of forms daily, understand where they struggle, and spend effort on optimizing their workflow than on pointless eye candy.
(In my experience, it's never been "this doesn't look as good as the latest version of Discord", or whatever.)
i feel like this isn't a tailwind problem it's the homogenization of component libraries like shadcn daisyui etc. all remarkably boring,
pair that with the field of ui/ux thinking landing pages that say nothing at all and you get a million webpages that look the same. every sass does this. in fact, every saas had a slop feeling to it because of this before AI took off. before chat friggen jippity and now claude and gemini were ubiquitous, i was regularly rolling my eyes at every. single. saas. website.
all the examples in OP don't look like a tailwind specific thing to me at all. they look like a broader boring internet-webdev equivalent to live laugh love pinterest home interior designs that predates the AI slopfest. this is the web styling VC's have been demanding from the startups they've invested in for many years now.
as far as tailwind goes, it's more like a utility set of classes but i see no reason why you can't get creative with it. feel like it's catching strays here simply because everyone's vibe coding and it's a common path for trained models to choose but that really says not a lot about tailwind and a whole lot about how people are choosing to use tailwind. it's not like tailwinds providing a breadth of components or is locking in certain stylistic elements. it's just that everyone's making the same choices because everyone's slopping their front ends.
I agree there is a "sameness" that you get from tailwind.
Tailwind has a unique benefit in that you can change the CSS of the page and just that page. There is no chance that you make a change that breaks the rest of the site because you wrote a rule wrong. In some environments/applications this is a big deal.
But honestly that's the only credit i'll give it. The class names are still confusing to me and you do get more flexibility with CSS. And i'd rather be writing classless css and targeting custom HTML elements anyway.
I don’t think tailwind or its templates are the issue (and believe me, I am the furthest thing from a tailwind advocate).
Just shipping a tailwind template is lazy and trite. But LLMs are made to optimize for the lazy and trite. They can only choose the lowest-common denominator.
LLMs don’t really know how to give designs personality. Most of the time I see attempts to improve the situation that basically just boil down to vibe-coded slop that’s prettier. I’m sure better designs exist, but the ones that do exist are almost certainly about the person who drove the LLM, not the LLM itself.
Tailwind just happens to be a common way to write CSS.
If Tailwind didn't exist people would just be writing the same article about {{ insert most common css tool here }}
Most people create generic similar looking websites, and most people that making a new website today use Tailwind. Correlation is not causation, and linking the two in any meaningful way is just a pointless discussion.
uh, that aesthetic was there long before tailwind, they didn't have a monopoly on rounded corners and that spaced out look lol. Much more ability to adapt than say trying to re-skin a bootstrap template back in the day.
the entire industry has always been converging toward "cookie-cutter" ui, and tailwind is just this cycle's flavor and now on steroids with AI. Honestly for 90% of the stuff out there that's literally fine and probably better. There was a time when being extra creative in FE work was rewarded. If your product is very brand dependent then yeah maybe try to find your "voice" but for the vast majority of them, esp dev focused, they just need to work on other things and not try to re-invent solutions to solved problems.
i know we all like to pretend our meticulously engineered button and drop shadow animations are actually moving a needle, but you're optimizing the last few percent at that point. most saas FE devs should be solving other problems like the UX and performance and not worry about more creative landing pages.
These pages look fine. I'm not seeing the problem. Most landing pages don't need to be creative statements; in fact, I'd wager the majority are hurt by creativity; real creativity is risky! Which of these applications want an artistic statement on their brochure pages?
Probably at the very least the one for artists and DJs, you don't think so? You'd rather take your car to the sweaty, unkempt mechanic with his hands coated in motor oil, who you've never seen without his overalls, or the clean mechanic who wears a nice business attire with the classy shoes and tie? I rest my case.
I don't really think it's tailwind. I use tailwind for everything, and it doesn't look like this. They're utility classes, you can do absolutely anything you want with them. LLMs just choose to do this.
The big gradient fonts came from Apple Keynote, i thought. At least that's where i first saw templates like that.
The unstated assumptions are a) a cookie cutter site is always vibecoded b) cookie cutter marketing site always means the person left it to last and thus did not invested deeply in their product.
Deeply flawed unfortunately.
For example - and I know it may not map cleanly back to software, but it’s worth thinking about - some of the best food is served in restaurants with plastic chairs and tables where the decor is an afterthought.
Not every landing page needs to be a creative exercise, since bootstrap we have landed on common patterns that reduce cognitive load and that is a good thing
For all the complaints like this that I see about AI generated websites, the complaints rarely come with counter examples of what a good human generated alternative should look like.
The authors blog design is perfectly functional, and I'm not suggesting that it needs any changes, but it also isn't a particularly impressive piece of web design.
I think we only notice this 'sameness' because we're swimming in it all day. I recently helped a non-tech friend with a vibe-coded site for his cafe. He had the pure enthusiasm of a kid showing off a drawing. He didn't care that it looked like a thousand other Tailwind sites.To him, the magic was simply that he had nothing, and now he has a website.
I think it's slop to many of us, but to a general user, they just aren't seeing it as slop.
And then there's folks that see the prevailing trends, do their best to make something similar because it looks "pro" and get accused of being slop. Sometimes I want to just make an abomination of HTML 2.0 humanslop for the authenticity :)
I honestly don't think this is bad. For anyone who is not a frontend engineer / designer, using tailwind gives good defaults and better LLM support.
Frameworks were always about lowering the bar for entry with cost to genuine new design. The alternative is worse than this. I honestly prefer this over a backend engineer using WordPress / static site generators / other no-code platforms.
My point being, quick AI slop landing pages and products will share the same vibes, but at the end Tailwind is just a collection of css classnames, allowing you to build and create as much as cool and unique pages as with plain css if you put the effort.
Tailwind, IMHO, doesn't bring any real value to the developer or the codebase.
It's just a weird way to write CSS right in the classes. We have a tool for that, it's called "writing CSS", and it actually has classes that allow sharing style choices across various components (which somehow is marketed as feature of TW)
In other words, I don't see how Tailwind is just "I want to write my CSS in obscure way in the wrong place".
> despite Tailwind being incredibly customisable I can instantly tell when a site is using Tailwind.
People used to say this a lot about Bootstrap.
Someone set up a bootstrap or not? guessing game and the real surprise was that you not only failed to spot some bootstrap sites you also guessed a lot of non-bootstrap sites were bootstrap because they all used the same modern UX paradigms.
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[ 76.6 ms ] story [ 923 ms ] thread(In my experience, it's never been "this doesn't look as good as the latest version of Discord", or whatever.)
pair that with the field of ui/ux thinking landing pages that say nothing at all and you get a million webpages that look the same. every sass does this. in fact, every saas had a slop feeling to it because of this before AI took off. before chat friggen jippity and now claude and gemini were ubiquitous, i was regularly rolling my eyes at every. single. saas. website.
all the examples in OP don't look like a tailwind specific thing to me at all. they look like a broader boring internet-webdev equivalent to live laugh love pinterest home interior designs that predates the AI slopfest. this is the web styling VC's have been demanding from the startups they've invested in for many years now.
as far as tailwind goes, it's more like a utility set of classes but i see no reason why you can't get creative with it. feel like it's catching strays here simply because everyone's vibe coding and it's a common path for trained models to choose but that really says not a lot about tailwind and a whole lot about how people are choosing to use tailwind. it's not like tailwinds providing a breadth of components or is locking in certain stylistic elements. it's just that everyone's making the same choices because everyone's slopping their front ends.
Tailwind has a unique benefit in that you can change the CSS of the page and just that page. There is no chance that you make a change that breaks the rest of the site because you wrote a rule wrong. In some environments/applications this is a big deal.
But honestly that's the only credit i'll give it. The class names are still confusing to me and you do get more flexibility with CSS. And i'd rather be writing classless css and targeting custom HTML elements anyway.
Just shipping a tailwind template is lazy and trite. But LLMs are made to optimize for the lazy and trite. They can only choose the lowest-common denominator.
LLMs don’t really know how to give designs personality. Most of the time I see attempts to improve the situation that basically just boil down to vibe-coded slop that’s prettier. I’m sure better designs exist, but the ones that do exist are almost certainly about the person who drove the LLM, not the LLM itself.
If Tailwind didn't exist people would just be writing the same article about {{ insert most common css tool here }}
Most people create generic similar looking websites, and most people that making a new website today use Tailwind. Correlation is not causation, and linking the two in any meaningful way is just a pointless discussion.
the entire industry has always been converging toward "cookie-cutter" ui, and tailwind is just this cycle's flavor and now on steroids with AI. Honestly for 90% of the stuff out there that's literally fine and probably better. There was a time when being extra creative in FE work was rewarded. If your product is very brand dependent then yeah maybe try to find your "voice" but for the vast majority of them, esp dev focused, they just need to work on other things and not try to re-invent solutions to solved problems.
i know we all like to pretend our meticulously engineered button and drop shadow animations are actually moving a needle, but you're optimizing the last few percent at that point. most saas FE devs should be solving other problems like the UX and performance and not worry about more creative landing pages.
The big gradient fonts came from Apple Keynote, i thought. At least that's where i first saw templates like that.
Deeply flawed unfortunately.
For example - and I know it may not map cleanly back to software, but it’s worth thinking about - some of the best food is served in restaurants with plastic chairs and tables where the decor is an afterthought.
The authors blog design is perfectly functional, and I'm not suggesting that it needs any changes, but it also isn't a particularly impressive piece of web design.
You can either please the Greeks or the Trojans, I guess.
I think it's slop to many of us, but to a general user, they just aren't seeing it as slop.
Imo UI is bifurcated. Its either not impressive(most websites) or there was immense effort put into it(like posthogs site).
So for a small project where im focusing on shipping speed and feature building, yeah tailwin is being used because I dont want to do motion design rn
https://berrus.app/ (game) https://josepvidal.dev/ (my site) https://fescims.com/ (mountaineering community)
Even my mobile app for the mountaineering community is tailwind (Yes, there is Tailwind for ReactNative): https://apps.apple.com/us/app/cims-mountain-challenges/id674...
My point being, quick AI slop landing pages and products will share the same vibes, but at the end Tailwind is just a collection of css classnames, allowing you to build and create as much as cool and unique pages as with plain css if you put the effort.
It's just a weird way to write CSS right in the classes. We have a tool for that, it's called "writing CSS", and it actually has classes that allow sharing style choices across various components (which somehow is marketed as feature of TW)
In other words, I don't see how Tailwind is just "I want to write my CSS in obscure way in the wrong place".
There definitely is a distinct AI "design" look, I just don't really see it here.
People used to say this a lot about Bootstrap.
Someone set up a bootstrap or not? guessing game and the real surprise was that you not only failed to spot some bootstrap sites you also guessed a lot of non-bootstrap sites were bootstrap because they all used the same modern UX paradigms.