[sandGorgon]

This whole post, and comments, sound extremely unrealistic. In an ideal world, things work as you would say - but in the real world, things don't work like this.

I'm not sure if any of you guys have seen the inside of a psd2html place - it is highly optimized with a hive mind around browser compatibility. I would say that best of the breed slicers leverage bootstrap, sass/less, etc and incorporate their experience inside it.

I would argue that the missing piece is not some new, magical way of doing things - but rather the interchange formats. For example designers don't use PSD grids that account for fluid layouts (FYI - I'm not even opening the can of worms that is responsive design). This makes it hard for slicers to deliver fluid layouts.

The search for the mythical designer + SASS engineer is very hard and very likely futile. In fact, my opinion is that you are starting the process incorrectly. I suggest to find a best of breed slicer, START the design process with them as opposed to a designer (get their recommended grids, etc) - then give the designer a set of constraints to work with. This should ensure your downstream workflows are smooth.