Traits of Popular Web Design

Seems like the visual design of web sites is becoming simpler. Web Design from Scratch lists common traits of good looking sites. The rundown:

• Simple layout
• 3D effects, used sparingly
• Soft, neutral background colours
• Strong colour, used sparingly
• Cute icons, used sparingly
• Plenty of whitespace
• Nice big text

I like this statement:

In general, the more white space the better. It’s very rare that I look at a page and think: “Gosh, they really need to cram that page up a bit!”