&gt; <i>Look at Hacker News. Pinboard. The Drudge Report. Adult Swim. Bloomberg Businessweek features. All of these sites [...] eschew the templated, user-friendly interfaces [...] Instead they’re built on imperfect, hand-coded HTML and take their design cues from ’90s graphics.</i><p>There&#x27;s a major difference between sites like HN and Pinboard to the Adult Swim and the Bloomberg sites linked. The former are functionally straightforward and lacking &#x27;flair&#x27; while the latter are merely visually styled after a quasi-90s-esque aesthetic and are attention-seeking. It&#x27;s what&#x27;s trending in design currently.<p>It&#x27;s not the first time we&#x27;ve seen stripped down designs&#x2F;ethos for sites in recent years. Around 2010 or so I can remember a slew of blogs with designs similar to the Drudge Report and such. A very neat purely text file based CMS named Stacey [1] practically made it a core part of the design process.<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.staceyapp.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.staceyapp.com&#x2F;</a>