Pick a colour scheme and try to keep it consistent. One or two core colours and then black, white and/or grey. Select one colour and use it as your action colour.
Padding has been mentioned also. One common mistake made by non-designers is to pack everything in. Have fat padding on bordered boxes or separating elements.
But something I didn't see in a skim through the comments was alignment. The single biggest improvement you can make with your work is with horizontal alignment (ErrantX, if you spot this comment, you could easily do this with the URLs you provided as examples). It will make your design appear neater and simpler - less chaos can mean that your target-points are more obvious. So, in a simple design, make sure your top-left logo is aligned with your H1 down the page which is aligned with your paragraphs.
My chapters were Color Theory, Visual Elements, Layout and maybe another one - can't remember. Parts of the Color Theory chapter were put online as a sample when it was published:
If you're in South Australia, I have a few spare copies of the book lying around if you want one (too lazy to post, sorry!). As I said, it's ancient in Internet-years now, but might be more useful to someone than it is to my bookshelves.
Padding has been mentioned also. One common mistake made by non-designers is to pack everything in. Have fat padding on bordered boxes or separating elements.
But something I didn't see in a skim through the comments was alignment. The single biggest improvement you can make with your work is with horizontal alignment (ErrantX, if you spot this comment, you could easily do this with the URLs you provided as examples). It will make your design appear neater and simpler - less chaos can mean that your target-points are more obvious. So, in a simple design, make sure your top-left logo is aligned with your H1 down the page which is aligned with your paragraphs.
FWIW, I co-wrote Web Graphics for Non-Designers around 2002/03: http://www.amazon.com/Web-Graphics-Non-Designers-Nick-Boyce/...
My chapters were Color Theory, Visual Elements, Layout and maybe another one - can't remember. Parts of the Color Theory chapter were put online as a sample when it was published:
http://www.webreference.com/authoring/graphics/color/nondesi...
If you're in South Australia, I have a few spare copies of the book lying around if you want one (too lazy to post, sorry!). As I said, it's ancient in Internet-years now, but might be more useful to someone than it is to my bookshelves.