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Craigslist is one of the ugliest websites on the Internet. The home page is an indistinct wall of links and text, the site is tough to navigate, the postings are cluttered, and the design has barely changed in the past 15 years. At a time when websites are competing to offer the best digital experiences, Craigslist is the pinnacle of user unfriendliness. And that's exactly what makes it brilliant, says Pascal Deville.
Deville is founder of Brutalist Websites, a site dedicated to the most frustrating design on the web. The site takes its name from the controversial architectural movement Brutalism. To some, Brutalist buildings are poetry in concrete; to others, they're chilly monoliths. Web design, Deville argues, has a similar dichotomy. Here's how he describes a Brutalist website:
In its ruggedness and lack of concern to look comfortable or easy, Brutalism can be seen as a reaction by a younger generation to the lightness, optimism, and frivolity of today's web design.
Appropriately, Deville's website has some of the hallmarks of the content it espouses—a rudimentary layout, one of the most basic typefaces (Courier), an infinite scroll, and no tabs or ways to sort the dozens of blog posts....
Yes they're ugly. But these websites have a little bit of charm.