: Components of a site that might cause imitation concerns I'm new to the web design and web comic fields. I'm a huge fan of The Oatmeal, and thought his tile layout was a good way to share

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I'm new to the web design and web comic fields.

I'm a huge fan of The Oatmeal, and thought his tile layout was a good way to share the most amount of comics for given real estate.

So, following the "Power Grid" pattern from this site (the last option), designshack.net/articles/layouts/10-rock-solid-website-layout-examples/, and drawing from elements of my favorite comics, TheOatmeal.com, XKCD, etc... I created my comics site: Hitting Trees with Sticks.com

I recently received a complaint from an avid The Oatmeal fan claiming I've "totally ripped off and imitated The Oatmeal"... I asked the author, Matthew Inman, what he thought... and he said my site design and subject matter were quite similar...

While I'll agree the tile layout I currently have is like his... I think it's also a standard/generic enough template...

That being said, here are my questions:

1) Are the designs too similar?

The Oatmeal.com:

My website:

2) If so, what are some of the guidelines/rules of thumb on designing a website based on templates that are used by other comic artists? Do you think I should change mine? I mean, it seems like so many comics use the same "click-to-get-next-comic style... and I like The Power Grid/The Oatmeal's style... I feel there aren't many other ways for me to display the latest comics and most popular comics for the user to see... is that wrong?

Thanks!

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: Pressure-sensitive freehand drawing of vector paths that are editable with the Illustrator Width tool? In illustrator, you can do pressure-sensitive drawing with the Blob Brush tool (if you set

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@Radia289

The problem doesn't seem to be the template (because it's different enough, considering the simplicity of the whole thing), but the typography. And maybe the way you combine typography with images (text on top, white background, images on bottom).

I'd be hard to answer to your second question based on what we can see here, because it doesn't look like a layout issue.

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: Components of a site that might cause imitation concerns I'm new to the web design and web comic fields. I'm a huge fan of The Oatmeal, and thought his tile layout was a good way to share

More posts by @Jessie844

: Pressure-sensitive freehand drawing of vector paths that are editable with the Illustrator Width tool? In illustrator, you can do pressure-sensitive drawing with the Blob Brush tool (if you set

: Size and transparency differences when saving PNG by different methods I'm exporting PSD layers to PNGs for a game's texture atlases. When I'm doing Copy -> New File (RGB 8-bit) -> Save

: Closing paths drawn with the Illustrator pencil tool? Prompted by John's question about leaving paths unclosed. Drawing with the pencil tool (or the paintbrush tool) in Illustrator leaves the

: I snap a shot with an iPhone and then rebuild it in Illustrator. (I seldom get the results I want with auto trace -- unless you are going for that rough look). I'm usually going for

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