I am not sure that what is shown above even needs much further explanation.
Clean typography, plenty of space, the usage of one strong color together with a lot of neutral ones such as grays, black and white - and you are more or less home and dry.
Clean typography, plenty of space, the usage of one strong color together with a lot of neutral ones such as grays, black and white - and you are more or less home and dry.
There will of course be occasions when the content of your site will necessitate that you use a company logotype or some sort of extra visual indicator on what the site is all about. But even then clean solutions will usually work much better since a website gives you a very small area to work on and things will usually end up being be placed very close together to begin with; so wherever you can be clean and simple it is good practice to go for it.
One thing web designers make a lot of usage of however are all the stylistic details which they use to enhance their work, by giving it a dimensionality which makes elements stand out from the page. When you look at the ones above you will notice that there are very few where the design elements have been placed on the page "as is". They have been worked upon with bevels, drop shadows, delicate touches, soft gradients, ultra thin strokes, and so on. Never overboard, never exaggerated, never so that it becomes coarse but very very carefully - almost like as if these designers are jewelers, working very patiently on exquisite ornaments or watches. This is something that I would encourage you to do as well.
Getting the exact right balance for these types of details is not so easy however. A lot of them are created with the layer styles in photoshop, but all I can say is that whenever I try my hand at doing something like this I cannot pull it off. I rarely manage to get something that has this level of refinement. So, my advice would be to use pre-created layer styles. A good selection can be downloaded from WebTreats. And here are a few other good places also:
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