It's a fun exercise, from my (hazy) memories of college lectures, Brutalism is roughly:
- structural elements aren't obscured by decoration
- infrastructure (cabling, conduits, piping, ductwork, etc) is likewise 'left exposed'
- building materials also left unadorned
- physical shapes are building-blocky, not 'finished'
- visual design elements are strictly utilitarian, or incidental to materials
I've gotta say while I mostly agree with the author, this article's "A website's materials aren't HTML tags, CSS, or JavaScript code" claim really rubs me the wrong way right off the bat - the structural elements are absolutely HTML and CSS and JS. HTML is the physical architectural structure, CSS is the visual treatment, and JS is the infrastructure that allows interactivity.
If anything, default browser styles would seem to be the nearest we've got to "HTML (structural elements) aren't obscured by decoration (CSS)." No rounded corners, no drop shadows, no parallax. Which makes "The default visual appearance of a button is often unpleasant or clashes with the visual language of the site" - I think under Brutalism, the clash would essentially be accepted as a hazard of "building materials left unadorned." Maybe you could sneak it in under "visual design elements are strictly utilitarian," as visual design is an incredible tool for usability
Leaving the infrastructure (JS) out in the open is a little trickier, though I guess you could point to open sourcing your codebase and not obfuscating your production code so it's easily reviewable in the Dev Tools as a way to satisfy that ideal. Static HTML sites also seem like they'd be a little more in line with Brutalism than SPAs I suppose.
- structural elements aren't obscured by decoration - infrastructure (cabling, conduits, piping, ductwork, etc) is likewise 'left exposed' - building materials also left unadorned - physical shapes are building-blocky, not 'finished' - visual design elements are strictly utilitarian, or incidental to materials
I've gotta say while I mostly agree with the author, this article's "A website's materials aren't HTML tags, CSS, or JavaScript code" claim really rubs me the wrong way right off the bat - the structural elements are absolutely HTML and CSS and JS. HTML is the physical architectural structure, CSS is the visual treatment, and JS is the infrastructure that allows interactivity.
If anything, default browser styles would seem to be the nearest we've got to "HTML (structural elements) aren't obscured by decoration (CSS)." No rounded corners, no drop shadows, no parallax. Which makes "The default visual appearance of a button is often unpleasant or clashes with the visual language of the site" - I think under Brutalism, the clash would essentially be accepted as a hazard of "building materials left unadorned." Maybe you could sneak it in under "visual design elements are strictly utilitarian," as visual design is an incredible tool for usability
Leaving the infrastructure (JS) out in the open is a little trickier, though I guess you could point to open sourcing your codebase and not obfuscating your production code so it's easily reviewable in the Dev Tools as a way to satisfy that ideal. Static HTML sites also seem like they'd be a little more in line with Brutalism than SPAs I suppose.