Normally the biggest thing people screw up is the colors. Use a color generator and then always pick colors from the theme. Two of my fav sites for this are
The next step after color is Typography. You don't need to get into all the nitty gritty crap about it but choose some good fonts normally something very clean and simple is your best bet. ie Arial, Helvelica, Verdana (used on this site) and Georgia. When you get into other fonts its very easy to use them incorrectly. For example you do not want to use Georgia as body text its to hard to read but it makes great headlines.
After those two changes the third is the hardest, making things feel well designed. Take a look at how other people have done similar things. A great site for this is http://patterntap.com/
Just because something is simple/spare/plain does not mean it cannot look good. For example take a look at these minimal sites
Typography is more important than color and shouldn't be overlooked. That 'nitty gritty crap' is actually very subtle differences between typefaces and styles that can't be easily detected and shouldn't be discarded.
Here's a great passage from Jason Santa Maria:
"Beyond the question of readability, much of typography comes down to contrast and form. The details of a typeface can inject meaning into a design: Soft lines and stroke weights, for example, can be useful for delicate material or to give an air of elegance and dignity. Those same attributes can be juxtaposed with unexpected content to produce an ironic effect. "
You can make something beautiful and well-designed without color at all. Black and white can be beautiful. The same cannot be said of typography.
And Georgia is actually very readable at small font sizes. It was specifically designed for use as a text font on a computer screen. It's a fine choice for body text.
In fact, Georgia is a no-brainer kind of choice if your site is text-heavy. It needs to be opened up a bit -- the line-height should be around 1.4em -- but it makes the right word shapes (most "expert" reading happens at higher pattern-recognition levels than letters) without sacrificing clarity at the level of letter shapes and letter-spacing (as, say, a Garamond or Palatino might). Serifs make a huge difference in readability. They just got a bad on-screen reputation from implementations like Times New Roman on Windows (which is more of a weak encryption scheme than a legitimate typographic decision).
Comments
Normally the biggest thing people screw up is the colors. Use a color generator and then always pick colors from the theme. Two of my fav sites for this are
http://colorschemedesigner.com/ and http://kuler.adobe.com/
The next step after color is Typography. You don't need to get into all the nitty gritty crap about it but choose some good fonts normally something very clean and simple is your best bet. ie Arial, Helvelica, Verdana (used on this site) and Georgia. When you get into other fonts its very easy to use them incorrectly. For example you do not want to use Georgia as body text its to hard to read but it makes great headlines.
After those two changes the third is the hardest, making things feel well designed. Take a look at how other people have done similar things. A great site for this is http://patterntap.com/
Just because something is simple/spare/plain does not mean it cannot look good. For example take a look at these minimal sites
http://www.fedthread.org/fr/today/ http://mattbango.com/ http://www.pixelhavenllc.com/ http://bobulate.com/
I disagree, respectfully.
Typography is more important than color and shouldn't be overlooked. That 'nitty gritty crap' is actually very subtle differences between typefaces and styles that can't be easily detected and shouldn't be discarded.
Here's a great passage from Jason Santa Maria:
"Beyond the question of readability, much of typography comes down to contrast and form. The details of a typeface can inject meaning into a design: Soft lines and stroke weights, for example, can be useful for delicate material or to give an air of elegance and dignity. Those same attributes can be juxtaposed with unexpected content to produce an ironic effect. "
tl;dr - typography is meaningful
You can make something beautiful and well-designed without color at all. Black and white can be beautiful. The same cannot be said of typography.
And Georgia is actually very readable at small font sizes. It was specifically designed for use as a text font on a computer screen. It's a fine choice for body text.
In fact, Georgia is a no-brainer kind of choice if your site is text-heavy. It needs to be opened up a bit -- the line-height should be around 1.4em -- but it makes the right word shapes (most "expert" reading happens at higher pattern-recognition levels than letters) without sacrificing clarity at the level of letter shapes and letter-spacing (as, say, a Garamond or Palatino might). Serifs make a huge difference in readability. They just got a bad on-screen reputation from implementations like Times New Roman on Windows (which is more of a weak encryption scheme than a legitimate typographic decision).
Thanks for PatternTap.com - very helpful resource.