To offer a more transparent/interactive rationale along these lines, I find that interfaces done in this style distract from the content rather than elevate it. The “quirkiness” is the main event. Having scrolled through it quickly, I find that my impression has nothing to do with what kind of work the designer does, but instead the fact that he likes weirdness for its own sake. An observation I’ve made over my career is that designers who do this kind of thing are often not very good at designing things that accomplish their purpose, because they’re too busy prioritizing novel distractions from the content.
To offer a more transparent/interactive rationale along these lines, I find that interfaces done in this style distract from the content rather than elevate it. The “quirkiness” is the main event. Having scrolled through it quickly, I find that my impression has nothing to do with what kind of work the designer does, but instead the fact that he likes weirdness for its own sake. An observation I’ve made over my career is that designers who do this kind of thing are often not very good at designing things that accomplish their purpose, because they’re too busy prioritizing novel distractions from the content.