Is Modern Web Design Too Formulaic?

At the web design / development I work at, none of the websites look like that. Sure, we are not making single pages, but still. There is more to the web than single pages fronts for startups.

This is only a trend. Humans love trends.

Wait until the next guy come up with a great idea and everyone will copy it once again. See the flat design trend.

This is very true.

I remember the days when poorly-built flash websites were the norm; they may have sucked from a usability standpoint, but they sure had the edge in originality!

No, it's not too formulaic. These "formulas" are very helpful to average web users because they are instantly able to understand a given website because it's following the norms.

Are car designs too formulaic? After all, they all have steering wheels and pedals. They all share characteristics so as to allow any driver to immediately know how to operate the vehicle without having to re-learn every component for every new car. The same is true for websites.

In fact, we've finally gotten to the point of understanding this, thanks to usability research, please don't try to reverse the trend.

Not to be an ass or anything, but isn't there some irony in "Microlancer" criticizing orignality in marketing site design while his designer site epitomizes the currently very trendy flat style? Complete with high contrast colors and a scrollspy'd comments section.

Again, not trying to be an ass. Actually I'd argue that true originality is damn near impossible to achieve, given that our ideas don't usually spring forth, fully clothed from Zeus's forehead.

It doesn't really matter. As a web-designer your job is not to invent a new aesthetic but to communicate a companys message in whatever way is most beneficial to that specific customer whether thats flat, 3d, contemporary, ugly, typographic and so on.

Spend some years doing this and you can follow any trend.

You are like a carpenter and 98% of you will stay carpenters, which is great as long as there is a need for carpenters.

But my advice would be this.

Learn design, learn to mimic, learn to be original. But don't be an artist for other peoples money unless they pay you to.

Instead on the side build a product, a company, a service a website, an experimental design lab and go crazy. And if you have the time learn to code. In fact as soon as your skills are descent learn to code.