title: Should Magento's blank theme still be used as a theme baseline (Magento version 1.7)?
body: <p>A good number of the tutorials I've found on Magento theme development recommend starting off with using blank as a guideline for making your own custom theme.  A lot of these articles are pretty old, as of the current version (1.7), is this still the case?</p>
  
  <p>P.S. - If there are any good/relevant theme development articles out there, aside from Magento's <a href="http://www.magentocommerce.com/design_guide" rel="nofollow">official design guide</a>, please feel free to link them.</p>