The Post
Brutalism For The Web
Why This Site Looks This Way
Because in a world of big images, html5 videos, and big fancy animations, it’s nice to just have information and readability above all. This isn’t to say that those things aren’t great. Cool things happen there.
But if your frontend framework changes every 6 months, or a new technology comes around, at a certain point you have to pivot quickly.
Time is a precious resource. Why waste it on new, experimental things if you don’t have to. Solid is better than new.
Since this is just a personal website and a resumé, I thought it was best to forgo the experimental and go with the solid.
The History
Read it here.
Short Version:
In a response to the decadent and optimistic architecture of the 30s and 40s, a pragmatic and “morally serious” design mentality emerged. It mostly used concrete.
History Repeats
Flashy and cool “startup” site design is viewed as young, hip, and innovative. They’re not wrong. There’s something positive and energetic about it.
Sometimes sites I work on look this way.
But not this one.
In response to the startup look, Brutalistic principles applied to the web look different. It’s uncaring towards how new it looks. It just looks. It reads well. It doesn’t break when new updates happen. It won’t be outdated because the tech it’s built on hasn’t gone away.
It’s constructed rather than crafted.
Concrete Web
This site is built on Jekyll (a Ruby blogging platform), with minimal SCSS and not much else. It works. It reads. It loads fast. It’s not going anywhere.