Choosing a UI design for Cafebot has been such a challenge. It feels like almost all apps follow the same formula: big rounded corners, frosted glass, and soft gradients. It’s getting way too boring.
I’m drawn to the raw yet expressive design style of platforms like Gumroad and Figma. It pairs bold, chaotic visuals with clean, strong typography to create a striking visual identity.
Brutalism is a 1950’s architectural trend that was abandoning all decorations, and creating brutally simple buildings made from concrete. They often weren’t even painted to emphasize their brutal nature. So big, brutal blocks of concrete.
It was the architects showing they were bored with the status-quo and trying something different. That feels very similar to the current search for the UI trend to take over design.
Some forms of brutalism have existed in graphics design before, but they often broke most of the typical layout rules, with huge text blocks often getting out of view. It was mostly popular in poster-design / graphics-design but some attempts to use it on the web existed as early as the late 90's.
Neo brutalism ditches most of that and merges traditional layout concepts with super-high contrast, solid, often purposefully clashing colors and simpler, yet quirky typography.
The blogger summarized the importance of typography, illustrations, and color. For someone like me who lacks design skills, I rely on ready-made Tailwind preset styles and use Headless UI components. So this is an attempt at trying something new.