[xondono]

I think part of it it’s the “build your design from blocks” mentality that is so dominant nowadays.

There’s a lot of ways to do hard aesthetics, but pretty much one way to do kawaii (roundness, pastels, flat appearance). Joining kawaii-sh art from different sources is way easier than joining other kinds of graphics.

I would guess that a significant part of the trend is people following the path of least resistance.

[m463]

I can see the other side of "building from a theme" or "building from a template", where you can choose a template that works for everyone, even old people, the colorblind, or even completely blind.

It is better than the 90's web pages where people could choose any foreground or background color, and people were free to choose yellow on green.