Sk-etchbook

I have a copy of The Principals of Beautiful Web Design on my computer but have not got round to reading it yet. I'm still thumbing my way through last months issue of .net and there is an sample extract included on the CD.
This is the preface, I think it sums up things pretty well.

Preface
When my wife and I moved into our house, one of our first major projects was to update the bathroom. The horribly gaudy floral wallpaper pattern, in combination with the gold sink fixtures, obnoxious mirrors, and tacky lighting, made us feel like we’d stepped into a previous decade every time we entered the master bathroom. Removing wallpaper is a tough job, but it’s even more difficult when there are multiple layers of the stuff. This was the case with our bathroom. Apparently the previous homeowners’ taste in wallpaper changed every few years, and rather than stripping off the wallpaper and starting over, they just covered ugly with more ugly. Ah, the joys of home ownership!

If there’s one thing our renovation adventures have taught me, it’s that there are strong parallels between designing a room’s decor and designing a good web site.

Good design is about the relationships between the elements involved, and creating a balance between them.
Whether we’re talking about a web site or bathroom makeover, throwing up a new layer of wallpaper or changing the background color isn’t a design solution in itself—it’s just part of a solution. While we removed the wallpaper and rollered some paint onto our bathroom, we also had to change the light fixtures, remove the gold shower doors, replace the mirrors, upgrade the lighting, paint the cabinets, change the switches and plugs, and scrape off the popcorn ceilings. If we’d just removed the tacky wallpaper and left all the other stuff, we’d still have an outdated bathroom. Web site design is similar: you can only do so many minor updates before the time comes to scrap what you have and start over.

Fads come and go, but good design is timeless.
Conforming to the latest design trends is a good way to ensure temporary public appeal, but how long will those trends last? As far as I know, there was hardly ever a time when marquee and blink tags were accepted as professional web design markup … but scrolling JavaScript news tickers, “high readability” hit-counters, and chunky table borders have graced the homepages of many high-profile sites in the past. These are the shag carpets, sparkly popcorn ceilings, and faux wood paneling of the web design world. Take a trip in the Internet Wayback Machine, and look for mid-’90s versions of some of the top Fortune 500 and pre-dot-com-boom-era web sites. Try to find examples of good and bad design. In the midst of some of the most outdated web sites, you’re likely to find some designs that still look good. Most likely, those graphical elements weren’t dependent on the “cutting edge” filters in what, at the time, was the recently released Photoshop 4.0. Good design transcends technology.