Absolutely. I posted a rant recently on how Scientific American lost me as a subscriber (and an evangelist) when they switched away from the 'journal' format, going so far as to increase the size of the body text to put out the same number of pages with about 10% less content.

I like and admire good graphic design. But not as much as I like and admire good writing. Does anyone think sites like Metafilter or HN would benefit from an orgy of visual style?