A really good graphic does indeed convey a great deal of information in a remarkably economical way. Each and every graphic on your site must contribute enough to the page its on to make it worth the time it takes for that graphic to load. Examine every graphic on your site with a merciless attitude. It's hard to believe that putting a fancy curly-q at the end of an otherwise horizontal line truly makes it 150 times better as a text separator. Many Websites employ icons that are much larger and more elaborate than they need to be.
Icons are fundamentally different from other graphics.
For an icon to be effective it does not need to be realistic, but merely recognizable . Anything more elaborate is ultimately wasteful. But unoptimized banner graphics can kill a page's load time. It's a rare logo that can't be brutalized. Pictures of words For sheer bandwidth-guzzling, there's probably nothing more wasteful than GIF images of words.