Michael Stelzner wrote:

Four Things Non-Designers Need to Know About Design

As a non-designer teaching non-designers, Donna used to think that she needed to teach her students some key principles of design. But through trial and error, she’s come to realize that it’s actually all about paring it back. We need to flip it on its head and stop trying to be designers.

The templates and tools are there for a reason, and they’re getting better and better. Pro designers are doing all of the hard work for us. They’re creating these amazing templates and then we’re coming along and making a mess of them (stuffing them up, in Aussie slang). So it’s really about starting with less, not designing from scratch.