Design Rules {in progress. . . .{

What you do when you are passionate about designing but have no design education background?
You love to create typography design but have no clue about direction, positioning, basic typeface, basic graphic design principles {Contrast.Repetition.Alignment.Proximity} and, what about the color, blending, etc.
You know the humble Dreamweaver tool to pull up the website but never understood the relationship of design elements, and you appreciate mighty Photoshop but again, failed to produce eye catching usable design.
For all above and for many other reasons, I am recommending following websites and great books on design that will make you a proficient designer:
Websites:

1)gomediazine:Design Rules, great post, good to get a refresher on the basics

2) Write Design: Use these as a good place to start.

3)BC home design: Everything you need to know about making the most out of colour in your home. More on interiors but great stuff on color, psychology, etc.

4)Nicely organized articles on design inspiration by Jacob Cass

5) Daniel Pink: a great site by Daniel H Pink

6)The Gestalt Principles In the 30s and 40s Gestalt psychology was applied to visual perception, most notably by Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Köhler, and Kurt Koffka who founded the so-called gestalt approaches to form perception. Their aim was to investigate the global and holistic processes involved in perceiving structure in the environment (e.g. Sternberg 1996). More specifically, they tried to explain human perception of groups of objects and how we perceive parts of objects and form whole objects on the basis of these.

7) The Gestalt Principles: The Gestalt principles of form perceotion

Books:
1)A WHOLE NEW MIND

2) Designing Brand Identity: A Complete Guide to Creating, Building, and Maintaining Strong Brands

3)The Non-Designer's Design Book by Robin Williams

4) The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst

5) Designing with Type: The Essential Guide to Typography by James Craig, William Bevington, and Irene Korol Scala

6) Thinking with Type: A Critical Guide for Designers, Writers, Editors, & Students by Ellen Lupton

7) Color Design Workbook: A Real-World Guide to Using Color in Graphic Design by Noreen Morioka, Terry Stone Sean Adams

8) Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability by Steve Krug

9) Clear Blogging: How People Blogging Are Changing the World and How You Can Join Them by Bob Walsh

10) Typographic Design: Form and Communication by Rob Carter