Style combination · Pairs well
Glitch Art × Brutalist Web Design
Both put the machinery on show; set corrupted images on a raw-HTML page of default fonts so the code and the broken pictures make one argument about the medium.
01
What each style brings
Each part of the design comes from the style with the stronger say in it, and each style gives at least two.
Glitch Art & Datamosh Graphics Brutalist Web Design
- Type from Brutalist Web Design
- Colour from Brutalist Web Design
- Form from Brutalist Web Design
- Composition from Glitch Art
- Surface from Glitch Art
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Display · Brutalist Web Design
Loud
Newsreader; Brutalist Web Design used Times New Roman and Courier New and system monospace
Text · Glitch Art
An art and design practice that makes digital failure the picture. Artists deliberately corrupt image and video files or short-circuit hardware: they edit a JPEG's bytes (databending), delete a video's keyframes so one shot smears into the next (datamoshing) or sort pixels into streaks. Compression blocks, torn scanlines, shifted colour channels and raw code replace drawing, and the colour comes from the fault. Rosa Menkman and GLI.TC/H framed it as a critique of seamless technology; designers took it onto record sleeves and fonts, music videos onto MTV in 2009, and it became a stock filter.
Space Mono; Glitch Art used Raw file bytes opened as text (databending in a text editor) and Operating-system interface fonts caught in error messages and cascading windows, as in JODI's My%Desktop
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Brutalist Web Design, with a counter-accent from Glitch Art. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Glitch Art & Datamosh Graphics Brutalist Web Design
-
#ffffffground · 36% -
#000000ink · 14% -
#ff0000accent · 18% -
#ff00ffaccent · 14% -
#0000eeaccent · 10% -
#00e5ffaccent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #ffffff;
--ink: #000000;
--accent-1: #ff0000;
--accent-2: #ff00ff;
--accent-3: #0000ee;
--accent-4: #00e5ff;
--font-display: "Newsreader", serif;
--font-text: "Space Mono", monospace;
}Use it with care
Glitch Art & Datamosh Graphics: Glitch video and animated glitch effects often flicker: keep flashes to three or fewer in any one second, and be stricter with saturated red, to meet WCAG 2.3.1 and protect people with photosensitive epilepsy. Datamoshing and databending usually start from someone else's footage or photographs, so clear the rights before corrupting them for commercial work. When a datamosh or pixel-sort look follows a particular artist's process, credit it; the 2009 music videos overtook the artists who developed the technique.
04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With Glitch Art
- Grunge Typography Contrasts · Grunge scanned in photocopier grain and dirt and layered type on the Mac; glitch art breaks the file and lets the codec make the damage. Pick analogue distress or digital failure deliberately rather than stacking both.
- Vaporwave Pairs well · Vaporwave uses glitch as one surface among busts, grids and pastel 3D; give a vaporwave video a real datamosh between its found clips so the smear comes from the file rather than a plug-in.
- Internet Ugly & Meme Vernacular Contrasts · Deep-fried memes also pile up JPEG damage, but as a joke for a crowd to copy; glitch art makes the damage its subject. Borrow the re-saving, not the punchline.
- Acid Graphics / New Ugly Contrasts · Acid graphics renders polished chrome and adds glitch as a finish; glitch art breaks the file and keeps what comes out. Decide whether a brief wants spectacle or exposure.
- Frutiger Aero Contrasts · Aero's glossy, seamless interface is the frictionless technology glitch art questions; corrupt one Aero-style screen to show what the gloss hides.
- International Typographic Style Contrasts · A clean Swiss grid is the perfect signal to break: tear one band of a strict layout sideways and let the rest stay legible as the reference.
- Witch House Graphics (Symbol Names and Haunted Web Imagery) Pairs well · Use channel displacement or compression damage to estrange a recognisable scene, but retain the symbol-name as the identity; the image need not become an abstract demonstration of file failure.
- Cyberpunk Visual Style Pairs well · Add signal tearing and scan-line breakup to suggest a failing, overloaded network.
With Brutalist Web Design
- International Typographic Style Pairs well · Pair raw HTML with a strict Swiss grid and one grotesque so brutalism reads as intentional rather than broken.
- Glassmorphism Contrasts · Glass's layered translucency is everything brutalism strips away; use the contrast to decide how much polish a product really needs.
- Corporate Memphis Contrasts · Corporate Memphis is the friendly corporate gloss brutalism rejects; quote it ironically to sharpen a critique.
- Punk & DIY Zine Pairs well · Borrow zine cut-and-paste attitude: collide screenshots, default fonts and scrawled notes on one page.
- Frutiger Aero Contrasts · Raw HTML against bubbly gloss is a sharp foil for ironic or nostalgic web projects.
- Internet Ugly & Meme Vernacular Pairs well · Put MS Paint drawings and image macros on a raw-HTML page of default fonts and blue links; both treat software defaults as honesty rather than lack of taste.
- Flash-Era Web Design (Flash Portfolio Sites) Contrasts · Raw, static HTML defaults against the fully art-directed animated stage.
- Material Design Contrasts · Where Material hides structure behind polished components, brutalism exposes it; one raw, default-styled element signals 'under the hood' in a polished product.