What kind of design freedom can you permit yourself in academic writing?

In scholarly journals, or publicising in certain magazines you are expected to hold true to a certain design pattern and citation style. However, when publishing your own work independently you are free from those constraints, or are you?

I am a designer by heart and every couple of years I create a new template that I use for future academic papers, following contemporary design patterns. In my opinion, my templates look nice. Not too strict, though flirting with kittenish. I am convinced that a nice design leads to a fruitful first impression. However, I am aware that this might be very subjective.

My question is, then, do academics generally look down on "design hippies" and should all retain a strict - possibly even chippy - style? Or does all of this not matter as long as everything is legible and well-formatted?

Here is an example of the template I am working on:

The font is called Pacifico and is generally border-line legible, so I'm still doubtful whether I'll use it. Also, its capitals aren't always that good - for instance L is not very distinguished from the lower-case l.