[HN Gopher] Show HN: Brutalist Hacker News - A HN reader inspire...
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Show HN: Brutalist Hacker News - A HN reader inspired by brutalist
web design
I've developed a Hacker News reader that draws inspiration from
Brutalist Web Design, the open web, Cyberpunk Aesthetics, and
glitch art. The entire project is crafted in Vanilla JavaScript,
contained within a single index.html file, eschewing any external
libraries. It features support for theming, including the use of
third-party themes. Additionally, users have the capability to
create and apply their own themes directly within the site.
Moreover, the application is designed as a Progressive Web App
(PWA), enabling it to be downloaded and used as an app on most
devices. I'm eager to receive feedback on both the implementation
and design aspects, particularly from the Hacker News community.
Mobile device testing remains a priority for further refinement, so
insights in this area would be particularly valuable. For more
detailed information and to explore further: - Project details are
available at https://github.com/wkyleg/brutalist-hacker-news - To
add or experiment with themes, please visit
https://github.com/wkyleg/brutalist-hacker-news/blob/main/th...
Author : wkyleg
Score : 18 points
Date : 2024-04-06 20:08 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (brutalisthackernews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (brutalisthackernews.com)
| sph wrote:
| I feel the original HN is much more brutalist than this demo.
| Bold colors and saturated gradients are not at all a part of that
| artistic movement.
|
| _" Brutalist buildings are characterised by minimalist
| constructions that showcase the bare building materials and
| structural elements over decorative design."_ says Wikipedia. The
| closest thing to this definition is the original
| https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ and not one of its later
| variations.
|
| One day I did some contract work at Giorgio Armani's offices in
| Milan, and, ignorant of brutalism, I thought it was the ugliest
| building I've ever been in. The entire interior was naked grey
| concrete. The floor, walls, ceiling. Everything was grey
| concrete. Now I know that it was brutalist in design, and as an
| art style it usually is pretty ugly, bare and quite gray.
| hyperorca wrote:
| I agree. On reading 'brutalist', I thought it would be grey, or
| purely black and white, more "concrete" and slightly
| depressing.
| chatmasta wrote:
| I've always thought of brutalism as the ultimate "function
| over form." It's _brutal_ in the sense that it "brutally"
| strips away the form until all that's left is the function.
| It's like minimalism without the vanity.
| tmountain wrote:
| I have been operating with the same working definition for
| a long time. I think the author is misusing the term.
| mikestew wrote:
| Might want to look it up before getting set on your
| definition. Sibling comment has it (mostly) right: it's
| literally "raw concrete".
| unavoidable wrote:
| Brutalism actually comes from the French word for concrete,
| "beton brut"; not English "brutality".
|
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Brutalism
| retrac wrote:
| Unfinished concrete, specifically. I would translate
| "brut" as "bare" or "unrefined" here. English brutality
| is related to French brut, but in French it means more
| like crude, unrefined, raw, blunt, with no particular
| sense of animalistic or violent.
| sph wrote:
| See also https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%A9ton_brut
| wongarsu wrote:
| It's called brutalism because brute is the French word for
| concrete. To many being made out of concrete would be a
| defining feature of brutalism, to others it's the exposed
| building materials without facade.
| imp0cat wrote:
| Agreed. And I really wanted to like it. I guess the weird
| colors are the glitch + cyberpunk influence?
| keepamovin wrote:
| This is true from the 'looking back' point of view of how the
| term's been used in the past, but there's currently a re-
| appropriation of brutalist experience re-interpreted by a
| younger, forward looking very creative movement producing these
| types of experiences that incorporate elements of glitch,
| retro, video-game saturated colors. You can understand it a bit
| by seeing how compared to modernslick web design, these
| creations invoke something similar to the spirit of brutalist.
| drivingmenuts wrote:
| No, not at all. If anything, the flashy, glitchy BS seems
| pretty anti-brutalist. Brutalism is about functionality, pure
| and simple. It doesn't have decorative elements. It's not
| cool,except in temperature. It doesn't have to be ugly, but
| the beauty of brutalism is minimalist, at best.
| maxglute wrote:
| Label is being re-appropriated, IMO doesn't make a lot of
| sense when it goes against core tenets. But alot of GenZ
| aesthetic are fun, but their naming hardly makes sense, or
| doesn't even try to with the iconography/typography being
| used. It's mostly vibes or labelling for the sake of
| categorization. See Frutiger Aero.
| drivingmenuts wrote:
| Whatever. It's fine as long as they don't get upset when
| we ignore their clearly misguided labeling and hand them
| a dictionary to look up "brutalism".
| thornewolf wrote:
| The design style is more accurately labeled "neo-brutalism",
| which is characterized by these bold colors.
|
| gumroad is one of the most popular examples:
| https://gumroad.com/
| retrac wrote:
| When it works, it's not ugly but, vaguely inhuman and austere.
| A kind of modern Gothic, like a medieval cathedral,
| overwhelming with dread and awe. Perhaps unsurprisingly it's
| quite a popular style for modern cathedrals, as well as
| courthouses, etc.
|
| My hometown, Toronto, is rather infamous for its fondness of
| brutalism: https://www.instagram.com/torontobrutalist/ I
| personally used to always hate it but some of it has grown on
| me.
| epolanski wrote:
| But that's brutalist "web design" not architecture.
| wongarsu wrote:
| If somebody had asked me what design movement this was inspired
| by, my first answer would have been that it's an interpretation
| of Frutiger Aero [1] through the lens of Windows 3.1.
|
| But if you change the theme to grayscale I can kind of see the
| connection to brutalism. The visible div borders around every
| comment are bare structural elements, and the huge skeuomorphic
| buttons are certainly closer to brutalism than HN's UI. HN is
| about the UI being minimalistic and muted, out of the way to
| the point of being nearly invisible. Brutalism on the other
| hand is about a kind of in-your-face minimalism, which this
| version does capture in a way.
|
| 1 https://aesthetics.fandom.com/wiki/Frutiger_Aero
| keepamovin wrote:
| I love this, this is so cool. Look at that aesthetic. The colors,
| gorgeous. Your GIF demo, perfect. A crazy desktop style early UI
| app for HN? Perfect.
|
| Thank you for making this. So cool. I would love to throw a
| browser in there. I have a retro page for a browser, but it's not
| quite done:
| https://browse.cloudtabs.net/roses/macintosh_system.index.ht...
|
| I just checkout out your live demo at
| https://brutalisthackernews.com/top?storyModalIdList=3995282...
|
| It's even nice and useable. I love how stuff just opens. It's
| crazy, it's really cool. I love how you just like "abundant
| windows". So cool. This is like perfect desktop. The way it
| works, takes me back. So cool to see HN through the prism of this
| ancient technology with a modern/glitchy color aesthetic twist.
| Love it.
|
| I hope you keep working on this :)
| zwaps wrote:
| I am confused Brutalist Web Design advocates for some simple
| rules which this thing doesn't seem to follow.
|
| It has more Javascript and the back button doesn't work. So,
| compared to this, the original Hacker News is actually Brutalist.
|
| Maybe I don't get it.
| keepamovin wrote:
| This is 'technically' true for a strict/literal (antiquated?
| heh:)) use of the term Brutalist. However, Brutalist as a term
| of art is being appropriated by a new crowd of retro aesthetic
| creators who like pixels, old UI styles and colors and glitch.
|
| You can be generous with your interpretation by understanding,
| compared to modern bland slick web design, this stuff can be
| viewed as invoking a brutalist experience for the
| viewer/participant, which while differing in the letter of the
| previous usage, aligns in many ways with the spirit of it.
|
| Of course, art is subjective experience and perception as well.
| I get if you feel differently and that's interesting! I'm sure
| you "get it" from where you stand. And that's perfectly valid I
| think. :)
| drivingmenuts wrote:
| Can you provide some other examples of artists who are
| "reinterpreting Brutalism"? Because it seems to me that they
| are completely missing the point.
| FdbkHb wrote:
| Brutalism is about the expression of form follows function. A
| brutalist building is grey not because people love grey but
| because that's the color of naked concrete and painting over
| would be considered adding needless form.
|
| Now, a color must be picked when you make a website, and it
| doesn't have to look grey, as pixels do not have an inherent
| color, unlike real world materials, such as concrete, wood or
| metals. But if you add useless animations (that glitchy thing
| at the top is obnoxious) that exist solely for the purpose of
| looking cool and not aid with understanding the UI, you are
| doing the absolute opposite of brutalism: form over function.
| This HN 'app' is several times worse to actually use over
| plain HN. It's not more legible, it's distracting, it breaks
| the back button etc.
|
| I wouldn't call this "appropriation of brutalism" but
| "misunderstanding of brutalism".
|
| It is definitely not ""antiquated"" to care about usability
| and removing distractions.
| enterexit wrote:
| Ditto. That site is brutal in its own sense, but it's not
| brutalist.
| Modified3019 wrote:
| No, you absolutely get it, the author is using the term exactly
| wrong. They've created something with form over function.
| lemonwaterlime wrote:
| HN is already brutalist. This linked site is not brutalist. This
| is closer to a punk aesthetic, perhaps even verging on Dadaist.
| nittanymount wrote:
| agreed
| snarkconjecture wrote:
| This follows fewer of the principles on the "Brutalist Web
| Design" link than HN does. In particular, it's slower, has less
| obvious links, breaks my back button, and has (imo) distracting
| unnecessary decoration.
|
| I would also bet it uses JavaScript for the "hyperlinks" but
| haven't checked.
| Naac wrote:
| Neat! Unfortunately Firefox doesn't allow rendering of the post
| page inside the Brutalist windows. I get the following error:
| https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/xframe-neterror-page?as...
| DEADMINCE wrote:
| Works fine for me on Firefox.
| contingencies wrote:
| I was anticipating a WebGL series of built spaces with structural
| properties derived from the relative comment strength, intuited
| subject type (from title semantics) and/or intuited per-thread
| social or technical properties (# links, information density,
| participation level, controversy level, emotionality, etc.).
| Perhaps arranged on a faux-street grid arranged through time and
| eyeballs, with the origin being "front page now".
| jl6 wrote:
| The ultimate brutalist website is a bare Apache directory
| listing. Functional, raw, ugly, with the structure exposed for
| all to see.
| maxglute wrote:
| Pretty cool, I'm a fan of GenZ aethestics, but holy shit do I
| hate their naming schemes. I know Brutalist is referencing
| webdesign, but some of these vibes themes are not very readable.
| Preloading gibberish is neat.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| > It's messy but it's kind of fun to build with a browser the way
| it was originally indented, which is really more like Self,
| Smalltalk, LISP, although this aproach doesn't scale very well
| nico wrote:
| Amazing! Thank you for sharing and making it open source
|
| Would love to see a terminal/TUI version of this
| Retr0id wrote:
| The glitchy effects are cool but I'm not sure I see the
| connection with brutalism.
| drivingmenuts wrote:
| I'm not sure I see any connection with readability.
| enterexit wrote:
| It's kitchy, not brutalist.
| uxcolumbo wrote:
| This might be great as an art piece, but I doubt it's something
| most HN users would use on a daily basis.
|
| Usability and readability first!
| fire_lake wrote:
| This is much less readable than classic HN, which is already
| plenty brutalist.
| MiscCompFacts wrote:
| I often use this site: https://brutalist.report to get a
| brutalist hacker news filter.
| PmTKg5d3AoKVnj0 wrote:
| Perhaps it works as "brutalism" (from french: 'beton brut',
| Concrete) if the fundamental Concrete of the web is imagined to
| be different. I do not think it fits the bill as it is.
| akkartik wrote:
| To me this seems punk and glitch, but not brutalist.
|
| Arguably HN is already pretty brutalist. As a second exemplar, I
| consider https://brutaldon.org pretty brutalist.
|
| It seems plausible that you can't be brutalist and be
| inaccessible without javascript enabled.
|
| It seems plausible that themes are the antithesis of brutalism.
| The point is to show the underlying structure. Not to add pretend
| structure.
| toxicunderGroov wrote:
| I've always liked; https://brutalist.report/
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Yeah and the glitches are distracting and precisely the kind of
| fluff brutalism argues against.
|
| Not to say I don't like the work here but it's definitely more
| about esthetic in my opinion
| jdpigeon wrote:
| This is cool! However I think the page is not interacting with
| the back button functionality correctly, at least on mobile.
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(page generated 2024-04-06 23:01 UTC)