CONTEMPORARY ANTI_DESIGN

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.

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.

odivino.com

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

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

⁄ The user doesn’t have to perform a defined task.