Bakari Chavanu posted How To Learn Principles of Design From Pre-Installed Templates on MakeUseOf.com January 18, 2010. For the full post and comments go to the following link:
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/learn-principles-design-preinstalled-templates/
In his post he advocates using templates from various programs to learn design principles. As I said when I re-tweeted January 19, 2010, the same principles apply to both web and print design.
Go ahead and read his post and comments, then let me know what you think.
Have you checked out templates and then adapted for your own design? If so, how has that worked out?