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CONTENTS
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WAT IS IT?
Explaining the consept of brutalism and anti-design
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HISTORICAL CONTEXT
Origins of brutalism and anti-design
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TIME LINE OF EARLY WEB DESIGN
Time line of development of early webdesign as a predecessor of contemporary brutalism and anti-design.
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CONTEMPORARY BRUTALISM
Image of Brutalism today, when and why it is used.
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CONTEMPORARY ANTI_DESIGN
Explaining the consept of brutalism and anti- design
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REFERENCES
Used sources of information.
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??????? WAT IS WEB BRUTALISM AND ANTI_DESIGN?
inhecity.srelka.com
In the past few years, brutalist design and anti-design has been slowly demanding attention and gaining popularity among some designers. At first, like most design trends, it was largely contained in cutting-edge design spaces (designer portfolios, digital agency sites, art-museum sites, etc.) Within what’s widely described as web brutalism there aretwo distinct styles:
⁄⁄ Brutalism, which derives its philosophy from an earlier architectural movement and is inspired by technical restrictions of early web design.
bigzh.ch
⁄⁄ Antidesign, which is often also referred to as brutalism, but has different goals and is expressed differently in the cotext of web and graphic design.
“Honest”
“BOLD”
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Originally brutalist digital design descends from an earlier movement. Web brutalism is inspired by the brutalist architecture of the 1950s. Brutalist buildings are characterized by their heavy and ‘ruthless’ appearance. and anti-design was associated with design flow and style art movement originating in Italy and lasting from the years 1966 - 1980. movement emphasized striking colours, scale distortion and used irony and kitsch. But later on in the sphere of graphic design it became something we look back on as early web design in 1990’s and early 2000’s. Nowadays Brutalism and Anti-design especially in web is recognised by a myriad of web safe colours, system fonts, irritatingly positioned images, a plethora of micro-interactions and hover effects, no distinctive hierarchy, lack of symmetry, very simple or no animation or
Faust Plakat, Ludovic Balland
*place anything that evokes a headache*
“Unapologetic”
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“Hideous.”
In general these 2 styles have a lot in common in their early web past, but we can tell them apart
⁄⁄ Brutalism tends to have highly modularized grid designs, clear hierarchical structure, Repeating geometric patterns, block coloring. ⁄⁄ Anti-design tends to be more “ugly” and chaotic almost oversaturated with layers and flashing imagery, they might purposely brake structure of the grid and hierarchical structure of text.
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HISTORY
ANTI_DESIGN Anti-Design was a design flow and style art movement originating in Italy. 1966 -1980. The movement emphasized striking colours, scale distortion and used irony and kitsh. The function of the object was to subvert the way you thought about the object. In architecture this was also known as the Radical Design period.This movement was a reaction against what many avant-garde designers at the time saw as the perfectionist aesthetics of Modernism.
The Ani-Design movement sought to harness power of design to create objects and living quarters that were unique rather than embracing style, mass production, consumerism, sales and greed.
Cristallo Cupboard, Alessandro Mendini
Chairs,Alessandro Mendini
//////////// Their designs were meant to be functional, not necessarily beautiful. Where Modernism followed the idea of objects should be permanent, Anti-Design rebels felt objects should be temporary, as quick to throw away and be replaced by something new and more functional. Lastly, where Modernism believed in the adage.
“form follows function” Anti-Design used the expressive potential of kitsch, irony, and distortion of scale... These characteristics would later become the hallmarks of Postmodern design and influence Memphis design. Proust Geometrica, Alessandro Mendini
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Geisel Library,William Pereira
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The Breuer Building, Marcel Breuer
Brutalism, also known as Brutalist architecture, is a style that emerged in the 1950s and grew out of the early-20th century modernist movement. Brutalist buildings are characterised by their massive, monolithic and ‘blocky’ appearance with a rigid geometric style and large-scale use of poured concrete. The movement began to decline in the 1970s, having been much criticised for being unwelcoming and inhuman. The term “brutalism” comes from a few different sources in Sweden, Britain, and France. Basically, it stems from the French béton brut, which translates to “raw”. And that’s exactly what brutalist design–in architecture and on the web– is at its core.When you look at why brutalism came to be in the 1940s and 1950s, there was a very clear reason for it. This was post-World War II when much of Europe was rebuilding after the highly destructive war that ravaged its cities. Rather than spend months or years designing and building lavish residences and public buildings to replace what had been lost, architects went with a more simplistic, practical, and cost-effective style.
Control Tower, Yoshinobu Ashihara, Tokyo
BRUTALISM HISTORY
Greater focus on practicality and purpose instead of ornamental design. As time wore on and the continent recovered, brutalist architecture became a symbol of that war recovery effort.
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Early web design development.
“Aesthehtics of early webdesign eventualy became tha basis of contemporary image of brualism and anti-design in webdesign.”
Early web era Frst ever website was created by Sir Tim Berners-Lee in 1990 and simply existed to tell visitors what the world wide web was. A copy of the original page from 1992 is still online and it consists of black text and embedded, blue links on a white background. Most of the websites at the time looked similar: entirely text-based. Just like Brutalist architecture was limited by lack of resources, web design was limited by technological specifics. As the technology progressed our capability in web design developed alongside. Thats wat became backbone and creation of brutalism and anti-design in the sphere of graphic design as well as the nostalgic era to refer too.
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Second-generation sites In 1995, Netscape released extensions to HTML which initiated development of new generation of web design, These were similar to first-generation sites but with graphic changes such as icons replacing words, tiled images, image borders and an increase in banners. They followed the “home page model”. Page where often decorated with icons, 3D buttons, windows and pictures. Sometimes sound files were loaded into these as well. Along with an HTML version supporting tables, new possibilities were introduced. Because of the lack of tools to create structure on web pages designers turned to the table element during the early days of the web. Also used Graphic elements such as visit counters and animated GIF images were used frequently and experimentally.
Mid-2000s personal profile designs
The Flash era Early HTML sites were very limited when it came to design options, and table structures and spacer GIFs needed for complex designs. That made Flash a welcome alternative to just using HTML. Flash became the primary tool for creating interactive and graphics websites according, allowing animation, custom fonts and shapes, 3D effects and splash pages. A splash page serves as an introduction to the website. often aiming to make a “strong first impression” by displaying “cacophony of visual excess” in the form of sliding photography, videos and status bars.
For a long time, and with its prime during the mid2000s, MySpace was widely regarded as the best online platform for social networking. It started as a social website where mostly young people connected, but soon started to attract many types of professionals looking to network and promote themselves. Before MySpace, creating an individual website was a demanding and difficult process for those not educated in programming. He states that the platform opened the opportunity for everyone to have a “page” of their own, which led to massive popularity. Users with an average level of skill tended to overdesign when personalizing their MySpace profiles. Some designers, he states, also picked up on the trend and adapted it for websites.
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Brutalism in contemporary graphic design Brutalism in digital design is a style that intentionally attempts to look raw, haphazard, or unadorned. It echoes early 1990s-style websites Sometimes this aspect of brutalism is expressed as bare-bones, almost naked HTML site with blue links. Both in architecture and in digital design, brutalism is seen as a reaction against artificiality and lightness. Proponents praise it for its honesty and daring. Brutalist designers want to break away from the stale, cookie-cutter, premade-template sites that dominate the web today. They want the web to be true to itself, to feel honest and not contrived.
You could say that many brutalist websites carry a black and white colour scheme. Some designers may use grey, staying close in appearance to the concrete of brutalist architecture, and many brutalist designs utilize monospace typefaces because of their raw, unadorned quality. Often Use strict grids and hierarchical structures to structuralize their designs.
Disslist.com
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Brutalist web design may be good for
⁄⁄ Brand new designers trying to get the hang of HTML. ⁄⁄ Anyone who wants to shock their audience or make a social statement. ⁄⁄ Websites suffering from slow page speeds or overly complex conversion funnels that want to ⁄⁄
experiment with a total redesign.
⁄⁄ Text-heavy websites that want more focus on the reading experience and less on distractions. ⁄⁄ Small e-commerce sites that want more focus on inventory and less on flashy promotional bars and ⁄⁄ Websites that have an audience that this type of nostalgia might appeal to.
DON’T DO THIS
DO THIS THING Brutalist web design is not good for ⁄⁄ Corporations and other entities that want to appear professional and modern. ⁄⁄ Anyone that wants to make their website a warm and welcoming environment. ⁄⁄ Websites that are complex in nature and require conversion features like mega menus, pop-ups and live chat to support their goals. ⁄⁄ Anyone nervous that anything but a modern design would confuse their audience and prevent them from converting in the end.
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ANTI_DESIGN in cocntemporary graphic design Anti-design is beginning to take on a new meaning, quite different from the spirit brutalism. Rather than just focusing on strippeddown UIs with raw or nonexistent styling, some designers interpret brutalism to mean rebelling against oversimplified design by intentionally creating ugly, disorienting, or complex interfaces. Though some lump this trend in with brutalism, it doesn’t fit with the original architectural sense of the word. For the sake of clarity, I’ll use the term antidesign to refer to this separate understanding of the movement.
odivino.com
Antidesign sites often feature a complete lack of visual hierarchy. Some use harsh colors, disorienting patterns, weird cursors, and unnecessary distracting animations. The overall effect feels like bad 1990s’ designs on steroids.
Why would someone try to make their design look bad, unfinished, or difficult to use? Humor-Many of these antidesigns are created as an inside joke for designers, who can see them as ironic. Attention-Truly outrageous antidesign sites can be perceived as edgy and provocative. Even those people who hate the design will visit the site and send it to their peers to criticize it. Any publicity is good publicity. ‘Freshness’-This is the motivation for antidesign that concerns me the most. Some designers are becoming bored with simple, straightforward, polished design. For them, antidesign brings complexity and novelty that they feel their products have been lacking
karolinapietrzyk.info
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ANTI_DESIG web may be good for ⁄⁄ If the audience is designers, illustrators or artists. They are generally skilled at using digital roducts, which is why they can manage it. ⁄⁄ Design done as a joke, and tou know your users will understand it as such ⁄⁄ If the product is meant for entertainment, which means interaction doesn’t have to be smooth ⁄⁄ task.
The user doesn’t have to perform a defined
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References ⁄⁄ Awwwards, www.awwwards.com (2017) Brutalism: Brutal Websites For Modern Day Webmasters. (Acc. 2019-02-23). ⁄⁄ Wilshere, A. (2017). What On Earth Is A Brutalist Website? 5 Things Today’s Designers Can Learn From Brutalism. Try Design Lab www.trydesignlab.com (Acc. 16 February 2019). ⁄⁄ Moran, K. (2017) Brutalism and Antidesign. Nielsen Norman Group, www. nngroup.com (Acc. 23 January 2019) ⁄⁄ Encyclopedia Britannica. List of art and design movements of the 20th century. www.britannica.com (Acc. 14March 2019) ⁄⁄
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https://brutalistwebsites.com/
Vilniaus dailės akademija Grafinio dizaino katedra Autorius : Amanda Motekaitytė Dėstytojai: Lekt. dr. Kristė Kibildytė-Klimienė II k. 2021 m., pavasario sem.
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