First of all... Hi to all the forums user :)
I'm a web developer (not a designer) I have skill in XHTML, CSS, XML, PHP, RoR, jQuery and some other stuff and it is quite strange to read something like "with drupal you can dress a website without knowing a single HTML concept ..." it make me scared and it make me think "WHAAAAAT!? Why I spent my time in studying web development concepts?!" but... this is another story.
CMS are very useful (in my case) when customers ask for a website with a low budget, and I choose drupal because of it's flexibility.
I would like to start a discussion that bring me to the best way to create a reusable layout.
It is quite complex to explain but I'll try... I aspect that drupal help me to dress a website in few hours (and this is what it promise to do), but I think it is not so easy to create more different websites...
The option seems to be three:
1) Use a preinstalled theme (that are very few) and change some colors
2) Use a theme engine like fusion and use an "engine-based" theme (I'm not sure I understand well)
3) Create your own theme (much more complex than create a website in XHTML and CSS)
Maybe I didn't get something but (at now) I feel that "theming" drupal could be more time consuming than create a simple HTML and CSS website.