Instead we have designers adding lighting and depth to create gradients and shadows. Good golly, have you been to a modern airport recently? Sure form follows function, but there is absolutely no hesitation on the part of designers to degrade function to make things sexy unless you work in government.
Let's not pretend that the offline world isn't concerned with aesthetics any less than the online one is.
They have sought to highlight the tiredness and crossness motif with brutal shapes and nerve jangling colours, to make effortless the business of separating the traveller for ever from his or her luggage or loved ones, to confuse the traveller with arrows that appear to point at the windows, distant tie racks, or the current position of Ursa Minor in the night sky, and wherever possible expose the plumbing on the grounds that it is functional, and conceal the departure gates, presumably on the assumption that they are not" – Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea Time Of The Soul
(In all honesty, I suspect I'm guilty of producing several websites that could easily be accused of those same faults – though I don't _think_ I've ever accidentally sent anyone to Murmansk…)