Web Designer Ledger

Nice post. Bookmarked and saved in my folder for great web design resources.

Although I'm not sure why anymore. No matter how much I try, my designs always come out horrible. Every time I ask someone for their opinion on a concept, they're first answer is, "Hire a professional designer."

Funny, I can visualize 9 layers deep into embedded code or enterprise data, but I have trouble with orange, purple, and all fonts.

FWIW, here is a list of the other links in that folder. Maybe they'll help someone else more than they've helped me.

http://colorschemedesigner.com/#

http://websitetips.com/colortools/sitepro/

http://www.colorsontheweb.com/colorwizard.asp

http://960.gs/

http://webdesignledger.com/inspiration/15-stunning-examples-of-data-visualization

What about adaptive / responsive design?

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/responsive-web-design/

http://coding.smashingmagazine.com/2011/01/12/guidelines-for-responsive-web-design/

http://webdesignledger.com/inspiration/30-creative-examples-of-responsive-web-design

I know it's easier to throw the same page no matter what screen size it is.

First you say that there is no single solution:

"You can not have one magic solution for all."

and then:

"Well, very simple. The iPhone is capable of rendering and interacting with the full page. It was the first browser to do so - it don't require a lite version. You could tap, zoom, pinch, drag and get the full depth of the page."

You just defend your ugly design by "it's not doable" and by "we know better"

I do a lot of charting for financial services software. The best practical book that I've found is The Wall Street Journal Guide to Information Graphics: The Dos and Don'ts of Presenting Data, Facts, and Figures. Simple but practical guidelines for displaying pie/line/area graphs.

But for your situation, check out some of these sites which focus on more complicated graphing techniques:

http://www.perceptualedge.com/examples.php

http://blogof.francescomugnai.com/2009/04/50-great-examples-of-infographics/

http://interface.fh-potsdam.de/infodesignpatterns/news.php

http://patternbrowser.org/

http://webdesignledger.com/inspiration/15-stunning-examples-of-data-visualization

http://www.tableausoftware.com/public/

I hate to complain, but I am so tired of these articles that just repost all the same old icon sets that have been out for years (or years in the digital sense). Every month a new one of these posts comes out, but with the same icon sets as every other post. Pet peeve.

http://webdesignledger.com/freebies/21-best-icon-sets-for-designing-web-apps

http://speckyboy.com/2008/07/28/96-best-ever-free-icon-sets-for-web-designers-developers-and-bloggers/

http://www.problogdesign.com/resources/30-best-free-icon-sets-for-bloggers/

http://www.webiconsets.com/

And the list goes on.

IMHO with CSS3 you can design a site that's nice enough in just HTML/CSS... if you're already a web developer I would spend your time designing in the actual HTML/CSS. Start trying to mimic good design elements. You probably won't get to the absolute top tier of design, but my assumption is you want to get to "good enough".

If you're insistent on Photoshop first, I would start with a bunch of tutorials:
http://webdesignledger.com/tutorials/20-high-quality-photoshop-web-design-tutorials
http://webdesign.tutsplus.com/

http://designfestival.com/

http://blog.typekit.com/

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/

http://methodandcraft.com/

http://webdesignerwall.com/

http://www.netmagazine.com/

http://webdesignledger.com/

http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/

http://www.alistapart.com/

http://www.colourlovers.com/blog/

Should be enough to get you started.