yes there are two. One is the horrible slice-it-up from PhotoShop school. The other is the bland W3 approved original styles moving swiftly towards graphic intensive design.

www.csszengarden.com

I think that good website design combines both graphical elements and fast loading non-graphical elements. Photoshop or Fireworks have pretty good features to help you optimize graphics files for the web and make them as small as possible (filesize) while still looking good.

You can also add and control a lot of graphic-seeming elements with stylesheets. Backgrounds, tables, text, divider lines, etc. etc. all add a bit of interest to the site but aren't graphical in nature so they still load fast. You might be able to make your buttons and navigation LOOK graphical and more interesting using CSS and not even have to use graphics.

I do think that a few graphics make the site interesting. You can pull of a really professional looking design with only a few graphics though - so I think you're okay if you use them wisely.

Good luck!
Second Platform

cheers... just not sure really... can't stand bland, yet hate some of the graphics intense sights I've seen..... I just feel a good banner/header that looks pretty sets the stage, then the content does the work.... having the same content on a bland site just isn't as affective!

NOTE: Try XAT.COM.... I had problems making certain pics smaller for the web using Jasc/Macromedia..... the XAT optimzer works wonders!