Michael Bierut has posted to the Design Observer on the subject of the New Brutalism (or the New Ugly, if you prefer). All very interesting, but I can't help feeling that such utter contrivance (the subject, not the article itself) is bankrupt, and just a tad patronising. Don't we have a responsibility to our fellow type designers, graphic designers, layout artists, creative directors and so on to ensure that we don't end up with some braindead fucktard of a bean-counting client handing us a copy of [enter name of fashionable magazine with bastardised type here] and asking why it is that he should have to pay for that spiffy condensed typeface when we can just, you know, squish Arial instead? There is a line near the end of The Wicker Man where, being dragged to his firey death by religious crazed loons, Edward Woodward screams, "For God's sake, think what you're doing!" I'm with him, just, you know, atheist.
Source: Michael Oswell