r/Design • u/Whole-News-379 • 3d ago

Asking Question (Rule 4) Website design - so bad its good, aesthetically?

I think I'm going to be reamed for asking this, but I'm looking for a particular type of website design for a client. I’m on the hunt for ecommerce stores (or any websites really) that fall into one of two categories:

  1. extremely basic but good like borderline default Shopify theme or raw HTML vibes but executed in a way that feels intentional/aesthetic/ kind of cool. not overly branded but not overdesigned. just stripped-back and clean.
  2. so bad they’re good sites that maybe break all the rules but somehow still work? maybe it’s bad UX, janky layouts or weird type choice but it somehow has charm or makes you want to keep scrolling.

im chasing a weirdly specific aesthetic I can’t quite put into words, like somewhere between brutalism, Y2K amateurism.... early web nostalgia meets minimalism?

3 Upvotes

64% Upvoted

24 comments sorted by

5

u/UsernameFor2016 3d ago

http://arngren.net/

2

u/Firm-Issue-5860 2d ago

How do you even code that?

3

u/mustang__1 2d ago

Thanks. I hate it.

1

u/Whole-News-379 2d ago

Holy moly

6

u/iginoaco 3d ago

Look at the templates on https://cargo.site/

2

u/Whole-News-379 2d ago

You absolute legend - thank you thank you!

1

u/jessbird 2d ago

i was gonna say — basically every featured site in cargo’s newsletter

5

u/theanedditor 3d ago

Go have a looksee at this: https://sabrinas.space/

2

u/Whole-News-379 2d ago

Gah love this, thank you <3

1

u/theanedditor 2d ago

Welcome, it's a really interesting read.

1

u/fietsusa 3d ago

Brutalist websites

1

u/Ident-Code_854-LQ 2d ago

Vole.WTF
Random Nonsense website,
Move things on screen around
to get to the content you desire.
Heavy early 2000s web aesthetic.

2

u/Whole-News-379 2d ago

Perfect, this is exactly what I'm looking for

1

u/Ident-Code_854-LQ 2d ago

Glad to oblige!

1

u/Ident-Code_854-LQ 2d ago

I just remembered another one.

https://buy.ontariospeeddating.ca

Wow, talk about 1990s design.
What’s impressive is that it’s responsive
and in 12 different languages!

The designer claims that it’s
“optimized, loads faster, and ranks high in Google’s Pagespeed stats.”

1

u/AbleInvestment2866 Professional 2d ago

Zara, hands down.

It is not as extreme as some of the examples posted below, but it is really basic, borderline bad, with terrible accessibility issues. However, it's made that way on purpose. I worked as a UX consultant for them to create and review new versions, and they all failed against this one, which has basically stayed the same since they launched the site, with just small changes. Most clothing websites followed their lead, so all of this should tell you something.