Seeing a lot of brutalist web design still popping up in portfolios and agency sites. Is it still a legitimate design direction or has it become a cliche at this point? Where do you land on this?
I think the answer depends on what we mean by brutalism. The original wave of web brutalism was a genuine reaction against the homogeneity of clean, safe, corporate web design. Sites like Craigslist or early Bloomberg were brutalist by necessity, and designers like David Rudnick were doing it as intentional artistic provocation. That work still holds up because it had something to say.
What’s happened since is that brutalism became an aesthetic template. Raw concrete textures, monospaced type, harsh colors, deliberately ‘ugly’ layouts. And when it becomes a template, it loses the rebellious energy that made it interesting in the first place. A brutalist portfolio site in 2026 doesn’t feel subversive. It feels like a different kind of conformity.
That said, the principles behind brutalism are still valuable: honesty about materials, rejection of unnecessary decoration, structural clarity. When designers apply those principles thoughtfully rather than just copying the surface aesthetic, the results can be really compelling. I’ve seen recent sites that feel brutalist in spirit without looking like a Brutalist Websites submission from 2018.
So my take: brutalism as a specific visual style is pretty played out. Brutalism as a design philosophy, prioritizing function and honesty over polish, still has legs.
From a practical standpoint, most client work can’t support full brutalism. I’ve had exactly zero clients say ‘make it look raw and uncomfortable.’ The audience for genuinely brutalist web design is mostly other designers, artists, and cultural institutions.
What I have seen work commercially is what I’d call ‘soft brutalism,’ borrowing some of the typographic boldness and structural honesty without the deliberate harshness. Monospaced type used selectively, visible grid structures, minimal decoration, but with enough warmth and usability that regular users don’t feel alienated. That middle ground is where I think there’s still room to do interesting work without it feeling like a 2019 trend piece.
it’s played out when it’s purely aesthetic mimicry. It’s still fresh when a designer genuinely commits to the philosophy and makes deliberate choices that serve the content. The problem is most ‘brutalist’ sites I see now are all surface, no substance. They look raw but the thinking behind them is anything but.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot because I see younger designers gravitating toward brutalism as a portfolio style, and I think they’re often making a strategic mistake. If your goal is to demonstrate your design range and get hired, a brutalist portfolio can actually work against you. Clients and hiring managers may wonder if you can do clean, polished work when the context demands it.
Now, if you’re a studio or independent creative doing experimental work, brutalism makes total sense as a positioning choice. It signals a specific point of view and attracts clients who want bold, unconventional design. But it has to be intentional and well-executed, not just ‘I put everything in Courier and made the background neon green.’
What I think is more interesting than rehashing brutalism is the current wave of anti-design that draws from brutalist principles but mixes in other influences. Graphic design that borrows from rave culture, punk zines, and experimental typography but exists within a functional digital framework. Those references feel more alive and culturally connected than brutalism as a standalone aesthetic.
The best work in this space isn’t trying to be brutalist. It’s trying to communicate something specific, and it happens to share some DNA with brutalism because both reject conventional polish in favor of directness.
This is a really interesting design criticism question, and I think @Thunderblossom nailed the key distinction between brutalism as a visual style versus brutalism as a philosophy. Let me add some context from the motion design perspective.
In animation and interactive design, the brutalist impulse has evolved into something I find much more compelling than the static brutalist websites of a few years ago. There’s a growing movement of designers using raw, unpolished motion, think glitchy transitions, abrupt cuts, deliberately mechanical timing, to create experiences that feel human and imperfect. It’s a reaction to the smooth, eased, predictable micro-interactions that dominate mainstream product design.
Studios like DIA and Mucho are doing work that has brutalist DNA but doesn’t look anything like a typical ‘brutalist website.’ Their motion design is bold, confident, and unafraid to break conventions, which is the essence of brutalism without the tired visual tropes.
I think the broader lesson here is that no design movement stays fresh forever when it gets reduced to a checklist of visual attributes. Brutalism isn’t the only example. Think about how flat design went from radical simplification to boring uniformity, or how neumorphism went from exciting to eye-roll in about six months. The cycle is always the same: a designer does something genuinely new, others copy the surface, the surface becomes a trend, the trend becomes a cliche.
What survives from each of these movements is the underlying idea. From flat design, we kept the emphasis on content and clarity. From brutalism, we’re keeping the permission to be bold and honest. From neumorphism, we’re keeping the interest in physicality and depth. The visual language evolves even when the movement name becomes outdated.
So to directly answer your question @Snaxx_TechGrid: brutalism as the specific look of raw HTML, monospaced type, and aggressive compositions is played out. But the spirit of challenging design conventions and prioritizing directness over decoration will never be played out, because it’s not really a trend. It’s a fundamental design posture that resurfaces in different forms with every generation of designers.
Really thoughtful discussion here. From a branding perspective, I’ve noticed that some of the most interesting brand identities right now borrow from brutalist sensibilities without being explicitly brutalist. Raw typography, minimal color palettes, prominent use of white space, and a general refusal to over-design. It reads as confident rather than aggressive.
I agree with @Smoke_Canyon that the anti-design wave is the more relevant conversation now. It takes the energy of brutalism and applies it with more cultural specificity and warmth. The result is design that feels intentional and opinionated without pushing users away. For web design specifically, I think that’s the sweet spot: bold enough to be memorable, accessible enough to be functional.