[Velocd]

I see little problem with design discussion here.

I'm personally fond of using Adobe Photoshop for the heart of the style, i.e. the header, footer, home and forum main page of a site.

Then just translate the design into HTML and CSS. It beats the hell out of stressing over how things should look when going at it in a text editor, with no real visual conception of how you want things to be.

Criteria I regard of most importance for any style (in no particular order):

• Mobility - how easy is it to navigate. Cluttery navbars or irregularly placed links are the worst yet most common thing I view on the web, and it's no surprise at times when portals holster most of them. When people go to a new website, it's fact that the first place they look is at the top of the page (it is where the logo is), so place your navigation/feature links at the top. (e.g. weather.com)
• Readability - small fonts look nice on techy sites, or those where the target audience is young, but stay away from using them on professional/eBusiness sites.
• Contrast / Colors - designs of Monochromatic or Analogous schemes seem to work best. If you're going with monochromatic, don't be too close on hues, or you might develop a style like deviantART (although I greatly respect deviantART for its content, the color scheme has been bugging me for years).
• Breathability - Another irritating design flaw that makes sites too compact. Not compact as in gamespot.com, which although things appear close together, the balance of colors and spacing between tables makes things look more spacious. A design like SitePoint.com really captures the roomy design. A style like artician looks nice, with a good blend of colors, but text and tables seem to compact. For a techy look, it does good, but could prove better. Another negative example are some portal systems, such as those for vBulletin, where the padding of tables is too close and the page seems scrunched.
• Stature - I define this style that means business, (it looks determined and professional). This includes not just aesthetics, but your HTML should also be very clean. Too many examples out there: microsoft.com, cafepress.com, or dubtastic.com. Obviously these sites are of high quality, but if you practice enough you'll come to understand that it really isn't that hard to do such (given you have the time).
• Respect - don't rip other styles. It's known we all at one point or another will look at another style and try to copy design elements of it, which is fine, but copying the entire HTML, or even a significant portion of its unique style, and then making changes just isn't the way to go (e.g. voidix looks a bit PHPbb'sh. Show some innovativeness. You'll improve your experience if you do the coding yourself, anyway.

Some of my recommendations. If I can think of more, I'll post.