No one should aim for average, that’s an incredibly defeatist way of looking at it. Besides, design matters. I know HN is frequented mostly by people with very little interest in such topics, but design absolutely matters.

And yes, while the author’s website is perfectly passable, it is by no means “good”. People pick up on that, they might not know they do, but they do. Design wouldn’t be an industry and a school by itself if it didn’t matter and just the average were good enough.