Even though I kinda dislike the 'fuck you and your usability' aspects of the 'brutalism' trend, I agree with the sentiment of this article. It's good to let the pendulum swing the other way every so often, so that things don't get so staid and homogenized. It's good to challenge the status quo.

That said, it's better in software than in architecture. I know there are defenders, but most brutalist architecture looks like dystopian prisons. Software can change much more easily than a building can when tastes change.

When was the last time you were amazed by the slick UI of the app you're using? For me, it's probably when iOS 7 first came out, but then I stopped noticing the interface very soon when I'm using the phone daily.

Think about physical products that are crucial for your morning. I can almost finish all my morning routine with my eyes closed. Because I'm so familiar with the environment, the placement of things, how they work etc, and there's not a time I stopped and look at my toothbrush and say,"OMG look at the contour of the handle, sexy toothbrush!" Physical products like these should be invisibly useful, so do digital ones.

Good products make you focus on the content and the experience, not distracting you by making things different for the sake of it. Perhaps some delightful micro interactions here and there, sure, but we have developed familiar UI/UX patterns through the years, why reinvent the wheel? I just want to look at your content, don't make me learn your new fancy minimal gesture based navigation(iPhone X I'm talking about you)

For websites though, we have more space to play with, it's okay to have bold imageries and quirky typography, since we have lot of space to accommodate with. I imagine it'll be an eyesore if I have to read the outline in my phone everyday. Just stop screaming at me with your colors please.

TL;DR - I think for mobile products, it's important to make it look distinctive enough to visually attract people, but not to a point that you need a manual for your users. Websites are different things.

I’ve seen many redesign projects over the last 5 years that have been big on minimalism and design trends, but completely fail to be any better than what replaced it. The worse culprits are the ones that offer almost the same UX, but with just bigger fonts and more whitespace. I know there are more than a few well-designed apps from the 90s that if they were release today would be accused of being brutalist, and work just as well.

This article is great – yes not everything should be brutalist, but not everything should be Material Design either. The web can be anything, so let it be. This reaction was going to happen, I think most designers could have seen this coming – so I say embrace it and enjoy it.

Have you ever visited an actual brutalist building? They were often erected as a counter measure to hippy revolution the government was worried about in the 60s and 70s (visit University of Wisconsin at Madison for some great examples of these buildings, btw. They're hilarious).

Brutalism was often anti-usability applied to architecture. I take the point of this article—lets break away from homogenized design.

A lot of the examples follow a standardized grid and just use high-contrast or clashing colours to emphasize individuality. They have an underlying reasoning to them that provides a scaffolding for useful web design. Maybe we could call this usable brutalism?

Great article - it does make me wonder though, how would you make a brutalist web or app design without that being a copy of a copy - do you have to push things to an absolute extreme juxtaposition of the usual way of doing things.