I really think that most designers have poor understanding of the confluence of creativity + functionalism + user needs. For every great designer, there are many who do not understand this balance. Combine that with trying to be trendy, aesthetic, flashy in addition to business/marketing objectives (ads, tracking, GDPR); you end up with a design enchilada as exemplified by the GP's link.

Does anyone remember Go's rebranding? https://blog.golang.org/go-brand

Compare that with boring but highly functional Rust Lang's home page and their branding: https://www.rust-lang.org/en-US/

Or even better, check MPFR's page: https://www.mpfr.org/

No bullshit, just content. I might be a minority, but to me aesthetics are not as important as the rest of the public values. Aesthetic aspects of design should follow and not lead in Design. Most people write this off as "non-designey" opinion who doesn't understand design which is not true. I think the Swiss in 1960's nailed aesthetics that don't get in the way, especially in layout (Muller-Brockmann) and typography (Frutiger).

These days, in design colleges we have this insane push for retro aesthetics (Brutalism, Vaporware, etc), trying to keep up with current trends as well as increasing pressure for originality. This leads designers to create substandard work in favor of originality. As Paul Rand said, "Don't try to be original. Just try to be good." - This sadly does not work when you're wired to do something different for your senior project as a designer. Designers graduate and create noise thereafter.

Furthermore, some of the burden of bad design should also be carried by the expectations from clients. It is not just about designers.

Edit: I just realized, I apologize how off-topic this discussion is to the original post.