Idealistic designers care about whether the end-users (meaning the people who will, say, visit the website) like the design.
Pragmatic designers care about whether the client likes the design.
It's quite a bit harder to make money as an idealistic designer, unless you can wield conversion rate data at the client. If you're just one designer on a team working for an agency, who's been given a "brand policy" document by the client? No chance.