All mvc so you can do anything with it from design perspective

I'm the only developer at a design firm and they want total freedom when it comes to design so I'm going to need this!

I think this is the only CMS that actually allows for that and is good!

you can make the front end of a website look however you want.

the only caveat i'd add to that is there is a path of diminishing returns on making edit mode experience match view mode exactly. when you start layering lots of images with css and whatnot, sometimes it makes sense to fork the edit view so its similar but a little easier to roll over the different things you can edit.

but anyways, now that I have a full keyboard, will elaborate.

I can't possibly see where anything in concrete5 would be constricting from a pure "html out" perspective. You have total control of all "code out" code which is html that gets rendered or echoed or print out into the http request, or the page returned. I have dealt with a bunch of lingo over the years so please forgive me if it doesn't jive with what you are used to.

But all things aside, you can really if you put your mind to it over-write the core block views that really chap your @ss and whip them into the shape/semantic code output you wish for them to echo/print/emit.

There are some things which I don't think are entirely efficient (including jquery on index.php regardless of if it is needed, some of that printed/echo'd js values, things like that, but that is hardly a design issue and more of an efficiency issue.

could you tell me a bit more about the jquery thing you were talking about? Does jquery not work well with C5? I though C5 was all about jquery? What do I need to know to include jquery in my index.php file?

yeah Concrete5 uses jQuery all the time. You don't have to include anything, a standard theme already makes sure that jQuery is included...