I appreciate the feedback. This post wasn't intended to imply that building a Drupal theme from scratch is the better approach to theming. I agree that in many cases a solid base theme provides many immediate advantages over starting fresh. And I would also recommend that those without a great deal of theming experience stick to starting with a contributed theme like Zen or Clean.

What I wanted to convey in this post was that starting from scratch shouldn't be ruled out. So often I've heard discussions around this topic — and it seems developers are continually toying with both options. Until attending the Acquia/Lullabot webinar I wouldn't have recommended the homemade approach, but the session really opened my eyes to the flexibility and efficiency of beginning with pure HTML/CSS. In less than an hour, the presenter had created a theme from scratch. It was incredible to see such rapid work.

It's definitely important to include $closure, $help, $messages, etc. in your homemade theme. I've suggested using the system's default page.tpl.php to pull these variables. You might also be interested in watching the archived Acquia video too. They explain this process in more detail.

And as always, if using a contributed theme works well for you and the thought of starting fresh is unappealing, by all means, stick to what works.