In his Linked List today at [DF](http://daringfireball.net/), John Gruber [pointed out](http://daringfireball.net/linked/2006/october#tue-17-inman) that Shaun Inman, the creator of [Mint](http://haveamint.com/), [announced a redesign](http://shauninman.com/post/heap/2006/10/16/the_9th_incarnation_of_shauninman_com) of his personal weblog. Now, I’m not much of a site designer – I use a pretty standard copy of [K2](http://www.getk2.com) here – but I noticed something interesting. Check out the screenshots; Shaun’s site is to the left.

This second screenshot (below) is from the [personal weblog](http://jogin.com/weblog/) of Tomas Jogin, a Mac-using designer from Sweden. (On a side note, his site was dark for a while and I’m glad to see that its back up.) His site runs on a blog engine called [Mephisto](http://mephistoblog.com/) and his design uses Ruby on Rails and CSS. Of his design, he says, “All rights reserved. Don’t steal my shit or I’ll hunt you down and kill you.”

Now, hold your horses. I’m not suggesting, even for a minute, that either of these gentlemen stole anything from the other; I’m just pointing out the similarities in the designs. Given the recent [brouhaha](http://joyeur.com/2006/09/29/falkner-winery-hands-off-unless-you-ply-me-with-wine) regarding site design between [Corkd](http://corkd.com/), [Joyeur](http://joyeur.com/) and [Falkner Winery](http://www.falknerwinery.com/), this similarity startled me. Things get even more coincidental when you realize that both sites feature an almost-centered single column of lightly-colored text on a dark background, just like [Daring Fireball](http://daringfireball.net/), the site on which Gruber pointed out Inman’s redesign. I guess that this could all be explained by the simple maxim that “great minds think alike.”

Of course, Inman’s new site does some [magic with CSS](http://shauninman.com/post/about/the_heap/) to make the site’s pages change colors over time…. using *over 33,000 different CSS files*. So, my point may become increasingly moot over time.

Interesting, nontheless.