[leggo2m]

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.