| ▲ | Show HN: Neobrutalism.dev – Just added Base UI support and added new color theme(neobrutalism.dev) |
| 59 points by samke- 2 hours ago | 32 comments |
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| ▲ | mrweasel 3 minutes ago | parent | next [-] |
| Wouldn't web brutalism be using the browsers "native" component, as in don't style <input> elements? |
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| ▲ | bradly an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I enjoy the look of these, but personally I wouldn't have thought to describe them as neobrutalist, so I'm thinking I don't know what it is. How is brutalism defined in this context? When I think web brutalism I think Craigslist style sites and reduction of superfluous design elements. |
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| ▲ | netsharc an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | 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"... 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... | | |
| ▲ | nzeid 35 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | FWIW, from the OP website: > 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. | | |
| ▲ | riversflow 13 minutes ago | parent [-] | | 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 of 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. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_Memphis |
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| ▲ | martythemaniak an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Right, hence why it's called "Neo-brutalist" and not "brutalist". It's not just plain un-styled html. | | |
| ▲ | samastur 35 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | Neo just means new. It's not an out-of-jail card if it is completely unrelated to the old/real thing. | |
| ▲ | wpm 29 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | Neo doesn't mean it can just be a completely different thing, it means its a modern take on the same thing from before but slightly evolved. Neo-Classicism still looks like Classicism. Neo Nazis are still Nazis. If I create something called Neo-Cuisine, you'd expect the result to be edible. If I see something calling itself "Neo-Brutalist Architecture", I'd expect it to look like Brutalism, or have some hallmark of the style. e.g. raw, but a different material new to the time period). As far as web design, there's nothing "raw" about 100s of dependencies and animated charts and rounded rects and opinionated fonts and the rest of the this pastiche in "64 components, charts and star shapes for React and Tailwind v4. Built on shadcn/ui and Base UI." This is just Corporate Memphis + dialog aesthetics[0] [0]: https://invisible-island.net/dialog/ | | |
| ▲ | martythemaniak 16 minutes ago | parent [-] | | It's a visual style, yet all your criticisms are about under-the-hood technicalities. The style I use for my personal projects (https://frost-e.com/design-system/) is a single css file, but looks similar. Nothing is stopping you from applying this visual style to plain HTML components. |
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| ▲ | JimBlackwood 24 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | “neowhimsical” would be a more accurate description. Definitely not “brutalist”, I’m unsure if the founders of this term ever saw anything brutalist. | |
| ▲ | Lalabadie 36 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I think your definition is closer. I would instead look at Bell Kiosk as a good example of someone doing the digital equivalent of brutalism | |
| ▲ | whalesalad 31 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I would call this bauhaus not neobrutalism. | |
| ▲ | martythemaniak an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | 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. | | |
| ▲ | rawgabbit 44 minutes ago | parent [-] | | I am not a front end dev. But one question I always had is why px and not em? I thought em as a relative distance would be better than hard coding px? |
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| ▲ | wps an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| 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. |
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| ▲ | yieldcrv 40 minutes ago | parent [-] | | 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 |
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| ▲ | rodolphoarruda 36 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Is there a pure CSS or CSS + JS alternative that does not rely on React? |
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| ▲ | elicash an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The charts are particularly great. 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. |
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| ▲ | cjs_ac an hour ago | parent [-] | | Unless you're building apps for people who are also in tech, your users won't have any idea what UI styles different LLMs push. |
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| ▲ | julianlam 37 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Ah, yes, the Brite Bootswatch skin. No need to mess around further. |
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| ▲ | brauhaus an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Is a dark mode available? That's the bit I struggle the most with this style. |
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| ▲ | slig an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Looks great, thanks for sharing. Do you plan to add Dark Mode and/or Shadcn theming? |
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| ▲ | samastur an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| looks awful (to provide a genuinely felt counter view) |
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| ▲ | Svoka an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Brutalism? More like 'Back to school' vibes to be honest |
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| ▲ | raincole an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I just realized this is one more thing destroyed by LLM after em-dashes. |
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| ▲ | nzeid 26 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Reminds me of Notion and old Basecamp. This is a very easy sell for me because everything these days is doing the infuriating gray text on gray background. |
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| ▲ | martythemaniak an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| 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. |
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| ▲ | jawngee an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| trapper keeper-ism |
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| ▲ | ls1911 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| nice web design ! |
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| ▲ | owencmcgrath an hour ago | parent | prev [-] |
| looks great! |
