Often I find webmasters are wanting designs in an unrealistic time frame, they wait til the last minute and want it done yesterday. While I certainly try to give everyone a totally unique design, lets face it, sites comprised of 3 or 4 tables and columns are going to start looking like someone else's site eventually.

Basically the original look evolves through the graphics, and those are time intensive... and many aren't willing to pay for that time. I'd say that's probably why the "cookie cutter" look evolved the way it did.

Think one of my pet peeves are webmasters wanting the long page style tour used on many reality sites and expect it to get priced out at as a standard (800x420) tour page price... when it's actually equivalent to a 2-3 page tour.