improving your design skills?
oneplusone: Looking at the two examples you provided, I think your problem falls into two categories. Typography and colors.Typography: The information hierarchy is not clear enough. In your second link the top section has near identical sizes and weights which makes it hard to see what is more important. I suggest you read The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst. It will teach you how to use type effectively and is a very good and interesting book.You have way too much copy on the page. You need to make it interesting or people won't want to read it. Things like bulleted lists and pull-quotes will break it up a bit and add visual flavor.Color: The colors you pick doesn't really work. In the first link the gray is way too dark and looks really dreary. In the second example the link, text, and header colors are so close together you can barely see the difference. They also don't really work well together. This is a matter of taste. Nobody can give you taste, its something you will need to develop.Practice makes perfect really. Take a look at other websites and just observe which colors work well together. There are lots of little tricks you can use to make a minimalist site looks great. For one, don't use pure black for type. It shimmers on the page. Instead use a really dark gray. I personally use HSB(0, 0, 15).Another thing you can do is to use HSB to pick your colors. Pick a single color you like, and then adjust the H slider to find a matching color. Its not perfect, but it works well enough.