[wonderyak]

I agree with everything you're stating here, I just wish it was that easy in practice.

Some of the problems with deliverables is managing client expectations, they expect or have gotten used to seeing output of a PSD that counts as 'what their site will look like'. The creation of a PSD as a deliverable for the 'final design' is boilerplate for every agency I've ever worked with.

Responsive design has finally started nailing the coffin though; it becomes too cumbersome for designers to create renderings of different viewports, let alone understand the intricacies of how media queries work or how assets are delivered to different devices.

There has been a lot of creative thinking about deliverables (Style Tiles, Atomic Design) which is helping us get over the hump.

I would hazard a guess that most of the sites in the SMB space are either WordPress templates or custom designs that were then handed off to a service or an outside developer to make into functional websites. Sometimes, the developer doesn't get to see anything until the client has signed off on the design. I see this happening with large companies which do multiple millions of dollars a year in agency work.