I don’t know if any of you ever have this kind of a day, but currently I am looking at the design of my site, and comparing it to other sites I read, and wondering how the heck I can make mine more visually appealing and interesting without ripping off the design or design traits that other sites have.

Some of the sites I read don’t have the best visual design but their use of typography inspires you to read on. Some sites have horrible typography, but their design is so beautiful and their use of whitespace perfect, that it is easy to read and nice to look at, and yet, I look at my site, and feel “ho-hum” about it. It is not that thrilling visually from a typography or design point of view. It is pretty much a straight-out-of-the-box WordPress install.

I could give a million links to a million different sites that I think are beautiful, but just have a look at the galleries on CSS Vault, CSS Beaulty, Unmatched Style, and Stylegala. I am not the greatest at Photoshop. I know almost nothing about typography. I consider myself a coder, not a designer. I would love to learn more about design, but I think a fair amount of design is artistic talent, and while I might be able to weave together descriptive paragraphs that inspire the imagination, I cannot for the life of me put together a design on my site, that “wows” me.