Those are fundamentals of design but a) they're hardly universal, and b) they only serve to anchor the debate. A person with that list can't answer you which c

Those are fundamentals of design but a) they're hardly universal, and b) they only serve to anchor the debate. A person with that list can't answer you which color the buttons should be, or say, whether a certain button is more like a confirm, info or cancel. They don't tell you how wide is too wide, or whether the hero needs to be above or below this particular content. It's a good starting point, but hardly anyone will be satisfied to be told, "well, the golden ratio is preserved when we make the content area 700 pixels wide" -- again, in the end these discussions always come down to trusting a person's taste. I've worked with plenty of properly trained designers, whatever is supposed to be proper.