Obviously there's not much use in keeping this going, but I want to be even clearer: the problem isn't whether or not what he's doing is cliche, the problem is

Obviously there's not much use in keeping this going, but I want to be even clearer: the problem isn't whether or not what he's doing is cliche, the problem is that it looks amateurish, distracting and unpleasant (sorry to be harsh, just trying to be clear). It looks wrong, not just outside of my expectations. I originally gave him a big list of concrete ideas of how to improve, it's not like I just said "boy this looks crappy" and told him to rip off existing sites. My broader point is that questions of originality and uniqueness are moot when you haven't crossed the threshold of basic quality, so it's counterproductive to worry about them. I can definitely appreciate your suggestion that I coat criticism with more than just the "constructive" preface, and I could have offered that I think it's a cool idea and that it looks like he's put in a lot of hard work. I'll do that next time.