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Show HN: Neobrutalism.dev – Just added Base UI support and added new color theme

50 points samke- 2 hours ago 29 comments

ls1911 1 hour ago | parent

nice web design !

owencmcgrath 1 hour ago | parent

looks great!

elicash 1 hour ago | parent

The charts are particularly great.

I will say I'm afraid to use this style because Gemini seems to love it so much and therefore users will make assumptions about how the website was created.

cjs_ac 47 minutes ago | parent

Unless you're building apps for people who are also in tech, your users won't have any idea what UI styles different LLMs push.

samastur 1 hour ago | parent

looks awful (to provide a genuinely felt counter view)

slig 1 hour ago | parent

Looks great, thanks for sharing. Do you plan to add Dark Mode and/or Shadcn theming?

wps 52 minutes ago | parent

Really unfortunate how much I immediately associate this with vibe coded sites. So many models trend to this exact neobrutalist style when any semblance of Swiss design or minimalism is mentioned in the prompt. However, I really do like how the style looks on some sites, like in https://www.not-ship.com/united-nations-map/ which was on HN earlier.

yieldcrv 20 minutes ago | parent

I associate beige or purple extremely long landing pages with vibe coded

alongside infinite tangentially related features, because it lacks intention but the creator was stuck in a bout of AI psychosis

here, on the other hand, I’m wondering why they would even release this, as it should be a component for more intentional vibe coding. A Claude design template masqueraded as a whole framework

bradly 50 minutes ago | parent

I enjoy the look of these, but personally I wouldn't have thought to describe them as neobrutalist, so I'm thinking I don't know what it is.

How is brutalism defined in this context? When I think web brutalism I think Craigslist style sites and reduction of superfluous design elements.

netsharc 30 minutes ago | parent

Yeah, I can't stand these influencer-wannabe web-devs misusing terms.

béton brut means "raw concrete" in French, and in architecture that's what brutalism is. I'd say only sites that look like they use the default style of HTML with no CSS on Netscape 1.x could be called "brutalist"...

E.g. https://stallman.org

IMO the design is more "Windows 3.1 Hot Dog Stand Theme" https://blog.codinghorror.com/a-tribute-to-the-windows-31-ho... combined with MS WordArt...

martythemaniak 29 minutes ago | parent

Right, hence why it's called "Neo-brutalist" and not "brutalist". It's not just plain un-styled html.

samastur 14 minutes ago | parent

Neo just means new. It's not an out-of-jail card if it is completely unrelated to the old/real thing.

wpm 9 minutes ago | parent

Neo doesn't mean it can just be a completely different thing, it means its a modern take on the same thing from before but slightly evolved. Neo-Classicism still looks like Classicism. Neo Nazis are still Nazis.

If I create something called Neo-Cuisine, you'd expect the result to be edible. If I see something calling itself "Neo-Brutalist Architecture", I'd expect it to look like Brutalism, or have some hallmark of the style. e.g. raw, but a different material new to the time period).

As far as web design, there's nothing "raw" about 100s of dependencies and animated charts and rounded rects and opinionated fonts and the rest of the this pastiche in "64 components, charts and star shapes for React and Tailwind v4. Built on shadcn/ui and Base UI." This is just Corporate Memphis + dialog aesthetics[0]

[0]: https://invisible-island.net/dialog/

nzeid 15 minutes ago | parent

FWIW, from the OP website:

> Neobrutalism is a mix of regular brutalism in web design and more modern typography, illustration, and animation standards. Neobrutalism refuses the usual components of UX-UI design and embraces uncomfortable design elements, and it is more fearless to use distinctive color palettes.

martythemaniak 30 minutes ago | parent

It's a niche and not super-well defined, but definitely existing style, ie: https://neubrutalism.com/

Broadly, it's a move away from flat, low contrast Material-type UIs and also away from the 'gradients and curves' AI-era designs and back into something that's more like the early web.

rawgabbit 24 minutes ago | parent

I am not a front end dev. But one question I always had is why px and not em? I thought em as a relative distance would be better than hard coding px?

Lalabadie 16 minutes ago | parent

I think your definition is closer. I would instead look at Bell Kiosk as a good example of someone doing the digital equivalent of brutalism

whalesalad 11 minutes ago | parent

I would call this bauhaus not neobrutalism.

JimBlackwood 4 minutes ago | parent

“neowhimsical” would be a more accurate description. Definitely not “brutalist”, I’m unsure if the founders of this term ever saw anything brutalist.

raincole 45 minutes ago | parent

I just realized this is one more thing destroyed by LLM after em-dashes.

switchbak 21 minutes ago | parent

This is like the high waisted, mom-pants of browser UI design.

brauhaus 45 minutes ago | parent

Is a dark mode available? That's the bit I struggle the most with this style.

Svoka 38 minutes ago | parent

Brutalism? More like 'Back to school' vibes to be honest

accrual 15 minutes ago | parent

Agree, this would probably be great UI for K-6 level educational apps.

jawngee 37 minutes ago | parent

trapper keeper-ism

martythemaniak 35 minutes ago | parent

I love it! I've been using my own styling for my various projects that I call "Soft NeoBrutalism" that's more colourful and lower contrast since I find most neobrutalist styles to be too stark. Sample here: https://frost-e.com/design-system/

Since mine is just a hacky vibe-coded single css file, I might switch to yours with a custom colour scheme.

julianlam 17 minutes ago | parent

Ah, yes, the Brite Bootswatch skin.

No need to mess around further.

rodolphoarruda 16 minutes ago | parent

Is there a pure CSS or CSS + JS alternative that does not rely on React?

nzeid 6 minutes ago | parent

Reminds me of Notion and old Basecamp.

This is a very easy sell for me because everything these days is doing the infuriating gray text on gray background.