His original design was clean, minimalist and... unremarkable.
Now it's an intentionally-jumbled chaos. Ugly or not, it's remarkable. After all... we are busy remarking on it.
The new design has impracticalities / downsides, specifically it's hard to visually locate a specific link if you leave and came back, but... that's not something that matters to him.
He wants /unsettling/, /dischordant/, /interesting/, and more importantly /MINE/.
This is the argument for post-modern art. Not necessarily beautiful, but evocative.
I guess one thing to note here is that MINE doesnt necessarily imply ugly.
Yes, precisely. For myself, I don't find it ugly at all. I find it to be fun and retro. As mentioned elsewhere, it's very "Geocities".