Cameron Moll is a web and interface designer who writes about design practice, creativity, and the web, and shows his portfolio.
HN commenters cite his 'nodes of inspiration' article on learning from existing work, and point to his portfolio as an example of admired design.
I've been asking the same questions lately and trying to find the answers. The problem that I've run into is that a lot of designers just feel what is right. It seems very instinctive, which makes it hard for them to pass on knowledge.
One designer that I found who seems to know and actively apply principles of good design is cameron moll (http://cameronmoll.com). Cameron gave a great talk a while back at the HOW Conference, and he posted a pdf to accompany the talk http://cameronmoll.com/archives/2009/05/free_download_good_vs_great_design/. I think this document is a great starting point to learn about design. Obviously, a 10-page document doesn't cover everything possible, but it recommends a few books for learning more. I haven't been able to pick them up yet, but I suspect you will find them helpful.
1. How Designers Think by Bryan Lawson
2. The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst
3.Universal Principles of Design by William Lidwell, Kritina Holden, Jill Butler
4. The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman
Even though every screen I use on a daily basis runs at least 1280x1024, in general, I still tend to work off 1024x768 as my baseline.
My feeling is that - as with 800x600 - I will likely stick with 1024x768 as the baseline for a little longer than I should... Just to be sure. A site that takes up a bit to little room is less annoying that a site that takes up too much, IMO.
See here for a somewhat old but useful discussion on the topic:
http://www.cameronmoll.com/archives/001220.html
Then yeah, there's the whole fluid width angle too... Most of the sites I have designed are actually fluid width (useable at 800x600 and up) rather than fixed. Fixed width is something that I have only more recently started experimenting with.
To me the issue is what people read in data. There are many suffering numberitis or they trust ANY number or "data" completely ignoring how it was established, errors and so on. Some even read the summary of an article stating their conclusion came from a certain dataset and do not even try to see that said dataset. It's not a "data" issue per se of course, but it's still an issue coming from the present data-bound way of thinking where many seems to have lost the ability of reasoning with their own mind.
I generally suggest anyone rediscover the old Abraham Wald anecdote https://www.cameronmoll.com/journal/abraham-wald-red-bullet-holes-origin-story before taking stanzas on data.
This is a great article on why designers should seek visual inspiration from pre-existing work and I know exactly one on how to do it:
http://cameronmoll.com/archives/000016.html
Cameron Moll calls it "nodes of inspiration" and this was highly influential on my budding young design career at the time. In essence, never rip off one interface entirely, instead you should rip off many elements from different sources and put them together in a seamless way.
It's a good way to build up the skills to make your own stuff from scratch and is the design equivalent of studying someone else's code.
Moll's comments on his porfolio page:
> While overseeing the redesign of LDS.org, the LDS web team asked me to step in towards the end of the project to add my take on the visuals, resulting in a few comped ideas within a very short timeframe.[1]
That sounds like he did just a bit of work late in the game. (Maybe you meant that, but my first take was "designed the whole site" from reading your "The designer of the LDS website.")
[1] http://www.cameronmoll.com/portfolio/
[2] The comparisons: http://www.cameronmoll.com/projects/lds/
Surprised to see nobody yet mention here Edward de Bono's concept of creative pause.
It's through activities such as purposeless walking — or showering, or doing the dishes — that we allow our consciousness to subside into a routine task while subconscious feedback is allowed to subtly rise. In theory this allows for more of a connection to the deeper going-ons in the brain.
More thoughts on the matter from designer Cameron Moll, dated six years ago: http://www.cameronmoll.com/archives/2008/11/showering_and_thinking/