As part of trying to become better (through necessity) at web design, I've been discovering the best way to learn about design is to find pet-peeve rants by good designers.
This one is going to give me something to chew on.
This one is going to give me something to chew on.
For example, if you have a lot of faces in your film, how do you make them "pop" and stand out without using lots of teal?
In this case, I scroll through and look at all of those pictures, and I know something is wrong. It takes someone with talent and experience to talk about the color balance. That gives me something concrete I can look for when I try to put together designs -- don't just go and get yourself complementary colors and then just go nuts with the contrast.
But all the while, this is developing your internal taste barometer, things you love and things you won't stand for. This will influence your work in every way possible, from things like stroke width (looks too constructivist!) to decisions about texture (halftone again?!, what is this, the 50s?)
I'll agree that it's good to keep up with what other people bitch about (gotta keep up with the zeitgeist!) but it's often funnier than informational, and more often, their posts lack substance or rally around some shallow point that you no longer care about. I mean, yes, i've seen the golden rectangle, i studied maths, but i don't buy the whole "look! look! the golden ratio is EVERYWHERE!" argument that is basically what this webpage boiled down to. But that's my own taste talking.