I'd say 80% of times is because of the client that doesn't want to risk with anything out of the standard, like in the teen example you mention. Show most people in this board something out of these guidelines and they'll go like an angry mob trying to lynch you just because you used red and black (just an example) colors for a teen site, no matter how good is it. So, most designers go with the crowd just to avoid to redo everything and make the page looks like all other pages in that niche. Furthermore, one of the most common requests to a designer is "I want a site that looks like [put site here]" or even blatants copies (there was a thread about some program which stolen all or almost all the designs from ARS, TCG and the suchs). When I've time, I try to make something original and show it first to the client or as an option. Sometimes it goes thru, sometimes not. But if I'm busy, simply go to the sure shot and it ALWAYS gets accepted. In short: not all the burden must be put on the designer's back :winkwink:

btw, the post above should've been: 50! (speaking of originality) :winkwink:

another thing: did you notice in the last days a bunch of requests for premade templates? Even if they're spam driven (one of them is for sure), you see several webmasters here interested in going with crowd, fuck originality, so, who's guilty about this lack of originality?

Me. It's my fault.