This presentation loses alot of context without the commentary that goes along with it, but here is the gist: Design is important to society, but many times designers or non-designers asked to provide a visual design or user interface can easily go to far with all the tools available (think CSS3 within the HTML5 paradigm). The cupcake acts as a visual metaphor for web and mobile app design / development (and is analogous to many things actually ). When we go too far we end up with a mess that is not enticing to anyone. The moral of the story is that one should train their eye to constantly critique their work; adding and subtracting as needed, asking what distracts or what is superflous and to never be afraid of the elegance of simplicity.