[alexchu]

I'd say that web design in today's market is as deep of a rabbit hole as development and coding itself. You really have to know the fundamentals of design, grid system, the trends, psychology of UX, and know-how to using the software packages.

Once you have a good grasp of the fundamentals of design theory (golden ratio, rule of thirds, color theory) it's really easy to adapt to different trends as you see fit to what you're working on. I agree with what some of the other guys suggested here, a quick way is to just copy what other sites are doing instead of trying to invent something yourself.

By copying, i don't mean a verbatim clone of other website's visuals. Look deeper into how a site is laid out, where certain elements are positioned, and try to figure out why the designers visualized the content the way they did.

All this would be assuming that you have a good understanding of photoshop/illustrator. If you don't feel comfortable using photoshop. I'd suggest you to either spend some time to pick it up (sites like tutplus have some basic tutorials that are pretty easy to follow http://psd.tutsplus.com/category/tutorials/interface-tutoria...), or you can just buy a prefab theme from themeforest like pius11 suggested.

[guynamedloren]

> You really have to know the fundamentals of design, grid system, the trends, psychology of UX, and know-how to using the software packages. ... golden ratio, rule of thirds, color theory ...

I disagree. I literally know none of those things, and have never even heard of most of them. I would consider myself a fairly competent designer having done several freelance projects and as well as my own (http://letspocket.com, http://madebyloren.com, http://snowday2011.com, http://beetnikaesthetics.com) and always receiving the highest complements on my work. I think you're approaching this from an academic standpoint and neglecting the fact that it is very, very possible to learn design from a "hacker" standpoint.

[accomplice]

I'm sorry you received such praise for the design of these, you may have been mislead. But yes, it's its entirely possible to hack together a look-a-like design and people will like it, but that does not make it good design. The same principle applies to code for what I hope are obvious reasons.

[rufugee]

Thanks Alex. I spend most of my time on linux, so photoshop/illustrator hasn't been an option, but the gimp and inkscape have. Still, I do have a macbook over in the corner and largely unused, so perhaps it's time to invest in some adobe software?

[alexchu]

yea I would definitely invest some time learning photoshop at least, it's the most powerful package up to date. Since almost all designers use it, it'll be easier for you to communicate with them knowing the basics of the software. Let me know if you need any other help in this area, I'll try my best to point you to some resources.