I’ve been reading Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox columns since late 90s and developed kind of usability nazi attitude. Not the worst characteristic to have as users rarely have enough advocates. However I’ve come to realize that there is a false dichotomy between usability and graphic design as there is only one user experience.
Both need to be taken into account when designing pretty much anything. Both actually are done for the user. Or should be. The usability evangelist in me does say that usability is in general more for the user than graphic design as the latter can more easily be warped to other goals than great user experience.