Take a look at any modern SaaS landing page today. What do you see? Soft, pill-shaped buttons taking 300 milliseconds to gently morph when you hover over them. Drop shadows rendered so softly they look like a faint fog. Gray text on a white background that requires squinting just to read the copyright.
Since when did website design become pillows?
We've lost our way in modern website design. The internet used to be structural. When you clicked a button in Windows 95, you damn well knew you clicked it. The borders inverted instantly. The contrast was harsh, legible, and functional. It was software, not an ambient art installation. Modern website design has sacrificed raw functionality for soft aesthetics that slow down the user experience.
THE RETURN TO CONCRETE
That's why I've adopted Brutalism for my own website design work. It's an anti-design philosophy drawn from 1950s architecture. While most designers are building fragile themes on top of bloated systems like WordPress, true brutalists are returning to static websites. Static websites strip away the unnecessary database calls and give you raw, blazing-fast HTML that doesn't need to apologize for being structural.
CORE RULE: NO BLUR
If it casts a shadow, that shadow is solid #111827 offset by exactly 4 pixels. Do not attempt to use rgba(0,0,0,0.1). Real objects cast hard shadows. Don't let your website design fool the user.
When everything transitions instantly (0ms), the UI feels infinitely faster. Your users aren't waiting for a buttery CSS animation to finish before the browser registers their cognitive input. They don't have to wait for a monolithic WordPress server to render the page layout. Moving away from WordPress and embracing static websites means delivering uncompromised speeds.
IMPLEMENTATION NOTES
Setting up Brutalism is easy. Rip out your CSS frameworks. Define a harsh color palette (pure white, deep black, stark red). Remove all border-radius variables. Force outline states to a solid 3px offset. Do this, and you strip away the fat.
Don't design for screenshots. Design to be used. Let's make the web raw again. Ditch WordPress, build static websites, and rethink your website design from the ground up.