As a friend of mine says - marketing and good UX is like laying grass out for the goats. It must be easily reachable and in digestible chunks. 1) Mock-ups. Sup

As a friend of mine says - marketing and good UX is like laying grass out for the goats. It must be easily reachable and in digestible chunks. 1) Mock-ups. Supposed to be mocked upon. Take a good page design you like, import it into Photoshop (or w/e) and start boxing the important elements. A lot of well designed sites are on the 960px width bandwagon (even Apple's homepage + most YC startups). Short answer - look up Blueprint CSS framework and 960px grids on Noupe.com 2) Mockingbird is awesome! Just worry about the creative flow first, then put it on a grid. 3) Like a special effect or design on a site, google "jquery site-name effect-name" will usually net some good plugins. Learn and repeat. Don't know what effect-name is? Firebug it :-) I am by no means a true designer, but I feel that the only thing stopping you/me/anyone is the labeling. When you feel that happening, just think of Iron Man, he designs the whole stack ;-)