Website design can be very complicated in that you can get over stimulated with all the different software options. Sometimes its great to go back to a simple design project. You can even look at some projects as a design challenge.
One great project is designing business cards. You have a very limited surface to work with but you need to communicate certain key elements in your design. Get to fancy and the message is lost. To simple and you get lost in trade show shuffle. Plus you still have to consider the cost.
One trick that was not available until several years ago are color business cards. The price for producing color designs has dropped dramatically so for larger orders you only end up paying a few cents more per unit.
But the color can cause some problems for some designers. If you try to include to much information and reverse out type in the design you can create some pretty ugly designs. I have seen some real estate business cards that tried to reverse out text from images of homes that needed to go back to the design board. If you need to include some images you can always use the other side of the card if you have several lines of text. You can also easily include an image on one portion of the card and the text on a solid background. Don’t get cared away with the color, remember the message is the key.