Can this really be classified as "web design"?

I have a friend who makes beautiful websites and I’ve always wondered how does it. He calls himself a programmer, although he never appears to be “coding” anything, he just makes elegant websites with no real meat to them (little functionality). I took a look at the source code of a few of his websites and discovered that he uses open source (ready-made) templates for all his pages and makes money off someone else’s designs. Don’t get me wrong, after he drags about ten different open-source kits onto his site, it looks brilliant, although can this really be labeled as “freelance web design” – as he calls it?