Good Design Principles

Good Design is something that anyone person can obtain. Reason is because good design follows the trends of the customer and if the majority of the market likes a certain thing, then every designer learns how to make that certain thing. So a good rule of thumb is to understand what the customer likes. Ways to understand the customer is to research constantly and the way to do that is find sites dedicated to good design for the customer like SitePoint

Beginner's Perspective to Web Design
Beautiful Web Design
Four Essentials to modern Web Design