There's really only one guy out there behind Template Monster, Homestead Templates, Great Templates, Template Box, and goddess knows what else, isn't there?

I've just spent an hour looking through about a thousand different web templates offered by these services, mostly to see what other people did in situations similar to Omaha's, and I have to say that the competition sucks. I'm not the world's greatest designer by any stretch-- I'm more of a critic-- but every single one of these websites shows a complete lack of anything other than cookie-cutter sensibilities and by-the-book creativity, bolstered only by a rudimentary understanding of Photoshop and access to a reasonably deep commercial photograph library.

The style of these sites is absolutely uniform, each site with a palette that came right off the color wheel with no daring whatsover, leading me to conclude that there's one guy making all of these.

Could I do better? Probably not. But graphical design isn't my focus; I'm a web-based application developer with a strong industrial background and a deep knowledge of the demands of Internet appliances. But there's an absolute universe of difference between these off-the-shelf beginners and the people I admire, like Design Is Kinky and various CSS Galleries. I could spend all day learning from those people. I learned nothing from Template Monster other than that there's one hell of a business model for just stamping crap out of a mold.

Tags: disgusted
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