2013 was a great year for typography. Designers have experimented more and more with typography, truly integrating it in their design. We have seen the advent of handmade type, slab serif in headlines, and whitespace to make the text look more readable and less crowded. In fact, 2013 was such a good year for typography, that we have even seen typography replacing image in some places.
Trends are the building blocks of culture. They appear and influence (for a while, at least) the way things are done, the way things look, or sound. Like Scott Cook said, major changes come about once a trend solidifies itself in culture, when it becomes more than just a passing fad. In web design, especially, trends are tremendously important, so it’s vital for you, as a web designer, to be ahead of the curve.
When you are working on a tight schedule, you have to take whatever shortcuts you can so you can get the job done. Now, that doesn’t mean the overall quality of your work should suffer. That would be bad for your ego, and your career. One corner you can cut in designing your site is working with PSD templates. This still allows you to actually design, but it gets rid of most of the tedious tweaking you need to do when starting from scratch.