Today, a lot of (commercial) web design is done just to compensate for the lack of (quality) content. That reminds me of that story about a blogger who spends more time designing a blog than writing articles. My advice to young web authors would be to spend more time on content than design. In the end, it doesn't really matter if you used system font (like Arial) or Google font, or if your background is #EEE or #FFF. Just don't make unaccessible sites

BTW: I am aware that average internet users don't think this way