Some people are born to be designers, some are born to develop then you get the ones which can do both. I have found re-designing my profile site more tedious than building. The designers at work can design a website within minutes with photoshop but it can take me ages and yet I am never satified.
A website without a clean design can put off alot of clients and graphics design plays a big role in customer satifaction. You could have the most complex site in the world but witout the look it could fall flat. Though I don’t say this to every website but it is important when you want to present your work. CSS Zen is one of my many sites dedicated to making good looking websites at face value and many books on the web dedicated to creating nice looking websites.
Over the next few weeks I will be researching on good web design principles but not within the building process but getting the design right on paper before it goes in to production.