As a graphic designer, I see no problem with this sort of thing. I'm guessing the author imagined these gizmos being used by people who are looking to publish s

As a graphic designer, I see no problem with this sort of thing. I'm guessing the author imagined these gizmos being used by people who are looking to publish something that isn't completely unstyled but doesn't have enough non-textual communication needs to justify getting someone with the expertise to make a real design, (let alone creating a complete visual identity.) For example, this sort of thing might be useful for someone rolling their own site for an open source python module. In these contexts, I see no problem with decoration for the sake of decoration as long as it doesn't significantly take away from the message.