promethea.incorporated

nonternary:

(@ilzolende​)

So, this is a thing. There’s also a WaPo article which refers to Brutalist websites as “ugly” and “unusable”.

The problem is that there seem to be two types of websites that get lumped together as “Brutalist”. Definition by extension:

Type I: Hacker News, Craigslist, tilde.town

Type II: AllHeels, WEATHER IS HAPPENING

I don’t know about you, but I don’t think of these two types as sharing much in the way of design philosophy. As far as I can tell the only similarity is that they’re fairly old-school, technologically; they could plausibly have been written in the late 90s.

And then there are some Type III, like whatever this is, which don’t even share the bare-HTML tech and seem to be included just because they’re, well, ugly and unusable.

The only websites that don’t qualify as “brutalist”, apparently, are those (Type IV?) that are inefficient, modern, and boring. Like the NY Times homepage, which somehow manages to spend the better part of ten seconds loading a bunch of text and images (and probably a disgusting quantity of Javascript). Ironically, if I were asked to define brutalism, “modern materials and aesthetics but lacking in both practicality and visual appeal” is probably pretty close.

I’ve decided it makes the most sense to organize these types on two axes: one for technical simplicity, robustness, etc. and one for visual complexity. Taking the first axis to be vertical and the second horizontal, we have Types I,II,III,IV clockwise from bottom right. Or, to include a helpful diagram:

#i use neither vim nor emacs #(yet. growth mindset)

hello may I have a moment to tell you about how vim is ~obviously~ the correct choice

Also, some of these “brutalist” websites (a subtype of type 1) are wonderful because vimperator absolutely loves them and they look nice that’s what I care about; not some shitty-complicated monstrosities that don’t show anything without getting permission to execute unsafe code and don’t show that much even then. Anyone can make a website, but elegance is the jazz. A modern and elegant website is only beaten by a lighter and less tech-bullshit-heavy version of elegance; while the ugly and the inelegant is still ugly and inelegant.

If/when I ever make a website for my own stuff, that’s what it’s going to be. As light as possible, while still looking awesome and most importantly doing its goddamn job and not getting in the way; just like spf13-vim with my custom synaesthesia colorscheme (not for releaseings yet), which is the editor I’m going to use to write it and ’:w index.html’ is totally going to happen. And it’s going to be more intuitive to learn than vim, which itself can easily prove its superiority in just half an hour if one uses ‘vimtutor’ and proceeds to do everything without ever taking their hands off the home row again. (hello may I have a moment to tell you about how a 60% mechanical keyboard in the dvorak layout and all other keys on the fn layer (fn replacing capslock because scorn capslock) is ~obviously~ the correct choice)

(via ilzolende)