When I saw their new boarding pass I just had to laugh. Someone awhile back went and redesigned Delta's boarding pass[1] and got a lot of crap over it for not taking into account why the boarding pass was the way it was.[2][3] But apparently someone at Virgin was taking notes.
There's a critical difference here; those redesigns are for boarding passes issued at the airport, while Virgin's are printed at home. You can get away with a lot when your common target equipment is an inkjet rather than a thermal printer.
There are still millions of people who don't have smartphones [1], for one. I'd imagine that there's a nontrivial overlap between that group and people who fly.
[1] http://passfail.squarespace.com/
[2] http://blog.timoni.org/post/318322031/a-practical-boarding-p...
[3] http://www.ryanholiday.net/this-is-what-real-analysis-looks-...