Web 2.0 designs

I'm pretty much a novice when it comes to web design - I know the code side of it but I'm rubbish at the graphical side of things.

I'd love to here some tips related to designing a "web 2.0" site (to use a buzzword!) - something sleek and modern. I'm particularly interested in the colour scheme that tends to be used on web sites these days and what sort of layout should be adopted (i.e. 2 column, 3 column etc.).

Any tips would be greatly appreciated.

Dan

Here's a colour palette for you. I quite like the "last.fm" crimson.

Here is something cool for figuring out your color scheme: http://kuler.adobe.com/ I forget who it was that posted this link on ozzu first, but they sure were smart in doing it!

Two columns or three, I would think that on most peoples monitors three columns would be about the max, otherwise it might start getting cluttered. Maybe sometimes one big column would be best just depending on the situation.

This one is great:

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/03 ... -round-up/

A selection of good web2.0 tutorials. It helped me a lot with some techniques.

You should look here too though:

http://mentalized.net/journal/2005/10/1 ... 20_layout/

A simple tutorial about making your very own web2.0 design