Is consistency alone good design?
Or can you get away by being bad in a consistent way? For ex. if a button which does not look like a button, but is probably the only kind of button in the application. Links which are not underlined.
Thoughts?
What you can "get away with" depends on the application and the users. A simple app for internal use can be as ugly as you like, but for something that potential clients will see before choosing whether or not to give you money (even for something unrelated) it would probably be a wise investment to get it done right.