Hold on a moment. We're talking about websites, not magazines.

If all you want is pretty to look at, why not just do the whole thing in image files? Including the text. It would save a heck of a lot of layout issues and be the same thing, right?

I don't think so. The text is in text for a reason.

My gripe is at the most basic level. Really basic stuff. A simple thing like page title, a description tag, and using a few important tag names don't affect the final visual appeal, and it's more likely to aid the design process. And from there the SEO expert can start weaving their magic without having to re-engineer the entire site.

Forgiving this because the website designer is an "artiste'" is just not on. An artist generally won't use watercolour on canvas made for oils. And if they ever did, it would be intended, not out of ignorance.