It's funny because it doesn't have any of the usual gimmicks lay people associate with "well-designed". No parallax, GIFs or fancy effects. Just plain good design that focuses on usability.
I honestly love it.
What's really funny is that two years ago, every single qz article posted to HN came accompanied by a horde of comments on how awful the site UX was.
Site redesigns occasionally make the front page, I don't remember Quartz's ever doing so.
Fixed headers and footers aside, it's tolerable on old Android mobile as well. Fairly effective design though, yes.