I will say I'm afraid to use this style because Gemini seems to love it so much and therefore users will make assumptions about how the website was created.
That might be true for them to know it was AI. Which yes, was how I worded it. But not necessarily good enough for it to be differentiated from everything else.
For example, in the Bootstrap days everything looked like Bootstrap and users got used to that, even if users hadn't specifically heard of the CSS framework.
I'm normally quite unopinionated on UI styles, but there's something about this style that feels actively hostile to my ability to concentrate on the content. It's not so much that I don't like it, it's just uncomfortable visually to me.
I assume it's only me, but would be interested if others have the same problem.
Really unfortunate how much I immediately associate this with vibe coded sites. So many models trend to this exact neobrutalist style when any semblance of Swiss design or minimalism is mentioned in the prompt. However, I really do like how the style looks on some sites, like in https://www.not-ship.com/united-nations-map/ which was on HN earlier.
I associate beige or purple extremely long landing pages with vibe coded
alongside infinite tangentially related features, because it lacks intention but the creator was stuck in a bout of AI psychosis
here, on the other hand, I’m wondering why they would even release this, as it should be a component for more intentional vibe coding. A Claude design template masqueraded as a whole framework
Yeah, I can't stand these influencer-wannabe web-devs misusing terms.
béton brut means "raw concrete" in French, and in architecture that's what brutalism is. I'd say only sites that look like they use the default style of HTML with no CSS on Netscape 1.x could be called "brutalist"...
> Neobrutalism is a mix of regular brutalism in web design and more modern typography, illustration, and animation standards. Neobrutalism refuses the usual components of UX-UI design and embraces uncomfortable design elements, and it is more fearless to use distinctive color palettes.
nothing about this is neobrutalist by their own standards. There is nothing “uncomfortable” about these standard round flat shapes, and unvibrant 3/4 saturated tones, they aren’t distinct, its called Alegria[1], calling it neobrutalism is a corruption of the meaning if brutalism and comes off as distinctly uncultured.
Neobrutalism should have sharp edges, very vibrant saturated colors, and virtually none of these flowery spiral shapes. (neo)brutalism is forcing a square peg in a round hole with a hammer, and leaving it like that on purpose, because the raw swedge is the aethetic.
I don’t necessarily think it’s doing something wildly new and different, but I also don’t see how this style looks anything like what’s in that Wikipedia article.
> I'd say only sites that look like they use the default style of HTML with no CSS on Netscape 1.x could be called "brutalist"
I agree, but maybe just not on the Netscape 1.x part. Brutalism in all of it's forms has never been about traditionalism. Even if concrete wasn't a new matieral in the 50s, you can't say something like Église Notre-Dame du Haut [0] is following any sort of traditional church architecture.
Brutalism on the web to me would focus more on honesty. An honest website shows you the processes your browser is undertaking, and how that results in rendering it's purpose. Images should load in progressively, any layout tables/divs/scaffolding shouldn't be invisible, a link/button/headings should behave/look how they "natively" do in whatever browser you happen to be using (not specifically netscape 1.x)
All things considered right now, I'd say honesty is a pretty non-traditional adjective for the web haha.
Completely forgetting that design in of itself is completely subjective and brutalism within a digital space is conveyed in an entirely different way to that of architecture.
Constantly reminded why I gladly left the design space, can't stand people who think design should be siloed or interpreted this way.
I instantly thought of Nielsen's personal homepage - http://useit.com - which has moved on to a little softer and corporate design - but still linger in the Internet Archive:
It's a niche and not super-well defined, but definitely existing style, ie: https://neubrutalism.com/
Broadly, it's a move away from flat, low contrast Material-type UIs and also away from the 'gradients and curves' AI-era designs and back into something that's more like the early web.
Interesting. I had thought my own web site (https://bradlyfeeley.com) was neo-brutalist, so I was taken back by how different this design was from my own.
I know we're just talking about silly word definitions and etymology here, but just from my personal understanding, your site represents what I think neobrutalism "looks like" a lot better than the previous examples which are branded as neobrutalist. This is just my perspective of course.
As a style that requires bright contrasting borders and heavy shadows, this is not particularly pleasant as a dark theme. See the “Hardbrut” in dark mode, posted elsewhere in this thread. The white “shadows” are an eye sore.
I love it! I've been using my own styling for my various projects that I call "Soft NeoBrutalism" that's more colourful and lower contrast since I find most neobrutalist styles to be too stark. Sample here: https://frost-e.com/design-system/
Since mine is just a hacky vibe-coded single css file, I might switch to yours with a custom colour scheme.
I wish. React + Tailwind as the commonly accepted default is too bad, it sacrifices portability for convenience. It's legacy code in the making, like jQuery and Bootstrap.
Yeah. Neobrutalism is mostly about the drop shadows + bright color palette. You don't really need a component library for what should be some basic CSS rules.
Dark/light, accent colors but otherwise no customization.
Going after standardized ui. Css blob with builtin font, or no font.
Kotlin components as well
Doesn't this tell you to stop using this style? It was fresh a few years ago when examples started popping up (Figma) but now Gemini churns it out and there are tons of templates and libraries that use the most common styling. It's not fun when there's a component library and everyone's site looks like it came from the same template.
Brutalist web design (which is really popular with artists, musicians and designers) is a beautiful style that leaves a lot of room for creativity, whereas this stuff is formulaic garbage.
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[ 0.21 ms ] story [ 38.5 ms ] threadI will say I'm afraid to use this style because Gemini seems to love it so much and therefore users will make assumptions about how the website was created.
For example, in the Bootstrap days everything looked like Bootstrap and users got used to that, even if users hadn't specifically heard of the CSS framework.
I'm normally quite unopinionated on UI styles, but there's something about this style that feels actively hostile to my ability to concentrate on the content. It's not so much that I don't like it, it's just uncomfortable visually to me.
I assume it's only me, but would be interested if others have the same problem.
alongside infinite tangentially related features, because it lacks intention but the creator was stuck in a bout of AI psychosis
here, on the other hand, I’m wondering why they would even release this, as it should be a component for more intentional vibe coding. A Claude design template masqueraded as a whole framework
How is brutalism defined in this context? When I think web brutalism I think Craigslist style sites and reduction of superfluous design elements.
béton brut means "raw concrete" in French, and in architecture that's what brutalism is. I'd say only sites that look like they use the default style of HTML with no CSS on Netscape 1.x could be called "brutalist"...
E.g. https://stallman.org
IMO the design is more "Windows 3.1 Hot Dog Stand Theme" https://blog.codinghorror.com/a-tribute-to-the-windows-31-ho... combined with MS WordArt...
> Neobrutalism is a mix of regular brutalism in web design and more modern typography, illustration, and animation standards. Neobrutalism refuses the usual components of UX-UI design and embraces uncomfortable design elements, and it is more fearless to use distinctive color palettes.
Neobrutalism should have sharp edges, very vibrant saturated colors, and virtually none of these flowery spiral shapes. (neo)brutalism is forcing a square peg in a round hole with a hammer, and leaving it like that on purpose, because the raw swedge is the aethetic.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_Memphis
I agree, but maybe just not on the Netscape 1.x part. Brutalism in all of it's forms has never been about traditionalism. Even if concrete wasn't a new matieral in the 50s, you can't say something like Église Notre-Dame du Haut [0] is following any sort of traditional church architecture.
Brutalism on the web to me would focus more on honesty. An honest website shows you the processes your browser is undertaking, and how that results in rendering it's purpose. Images should load in progressively, any layout tables/divs/scaffolding shouldn't be invisible, a link/button/headings should behave/look how they "natively" do in whatever browser you happen to be using (not specifically netscape 1.x)
All things considered right now, I'd say honesty is a pretty non-traditional adjective for the web haha.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notre-Dame_du_Haut
Constantly reminded why I gladly left the design space, can't stand people who think design should be siloed or interpreted this way.
1996:
https://web.archive.org/web/19961227172043/http://www.useit....
2001:
https://web.archive.org/web/20010711195207/http://www.useit....
Broadly, it's a move away from flat, low contrast Material-type UIs and also away from the 'gradients and curves' AI-era designs and back into something that's more like the early web.
As a style that requires bright contrasting borders and heavy shadows, this is not particularly pleasant as a dark theme. See the “Hardbrut” in dark mode, posted elsewhere in this thread. The white “shadows” are an eye sore.
Since mine is just a hacky vibe-coded single css file, I might switch to yours with a custom colour scheme.
No need to mess around further.
This is a very easy sell for me because everything these days is doing the infuriating gray text on gray background.
These pages are closer to "neobrutalism" or what I would call "Cybermod" [0], I think...
<https://webb.page>
<https://garden.bradwoods.io>
[0]: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44415330>
“Neobrutalism” might be wrong in concept, but it was coined around 2023, that ship has sailed.
> “Neobrutalism” might be wrong in concept, but it was coined around 2023, that ship has sailed.
Who cares. It's 2026. All it takes to sink a sailing ship is a few determined gents in a motorboat. It's called Post-Corporate Memphis!
Maybe also could be described as Post Layervault as I don’t recall a website using so many primary colors and flat shading before they made it cool.
This component library and the LLM default interpretation of the style is very much "in your face."
As an example, the black scrollbar here[0] is very heavy, a component which isn't meant to be looked at, but is distracting on first glance.
Prompting an LLM to make "lightly styled" neobrutalist is much more pleasing to my eyes, but maybe I'm alone in that.
[0]https://www.neobrutalism.dev/docs
Dark/light, accent colors but otherwise no customization. Going after standardized ui. Css blob with builtin font, or no font. Kotlin components as well
Brutalist web design (which is really popular with artists, musicians and designers) is a beautiful style that leaves a lot of room for creativity, whereas this stuff is formulaic garbage.