I disagree with the author (and this sentiment) mainly because of the really weird thing that front end developers and UX designers do in that they look at all other types of design and decide to use their scales to decide if something unrelated is worthy or unworthy.

The first dribble post was an experiment in animation in combination with a futuristic rendering of a platform that doesn't exist. He doesn't have anywhere enough information to determine if there is meaning. Just enough information to decide that, "well there are shadows and animations and shadows, and I don't understand it, so it's bad. It's being abused."

And it caught his attention enough to be something that made him think of it long enough to incite a rant.

It's on a site made to get attention, and it got his.

I don't even think it looks all that good but it's super obvious they aren't submitting this to a company. And they aren't putting anywhere near as profound a meaning on it as he is.

The dropbox example is horrible because the icons did serve a purpose, on this company's site sure, they've become global enough that they likely do have their site in multiple languages.

Icons serve the purpose of providing information in ways other than language, a huge issue that can be overcome with design.

A person creating work isn't so much the person to assign a piece of work to a trend as it is the person viewing it.

tl;dr- The article isn't very good and reads like a lot of click bait "expert" articles. It makes the mistake of applying a blanket set of rules to all situations and judging them from there.

I wouldn't walk up to a mom and pop grocery shop and ask them if they are hitting their KPI's just like I would walk into coke asking them if they've managed to sell 10 cokes and ask if they need me to make a poster.

So why apply User Experience rules to all forms of design, including those that are closer to art for arts sake.