Routed Access Design

Hey, folks. Quick question about Routed Access design.

As I understand it, if your VLANs span multiple switches, then you're gonna want to run L2 down from the Distribution layer (trunk between Disto switches) and run HSRP with your STP root bridges in sync with your HSRP primary routers. That seems logical. However, it seems to be that design best practices suggest that it is best to avoid spanning VLANS and instead running L3 down to the access layer if possible, ie Router Access Design. The phrase I picked up from watching a Cisco Live presentation was that the best way to implement this was: "A subnet = A vlan = A single access switch".

Clearly this rule prevents spanning vlans across multiple switches, however, I was wondering can you still implement multiple vlans on the same switch, so long as they don't span? I.e could Access Switch 1 have VLANS 10,20,30 configured on it in a routed access design, whilst Access Switch 2 have VLANS 40,50,60 configured on it, so long as there is no crossover? Or does that maxim really imply that the way to implement this really is to limit a single switch to having just 1 dedicated VLAN configured on it?

Apologies if this seems like a silly question, I'm still relatively new to the game and I've found it's best in networking not to make assumptions and try to get a concrete answer haha.