Hi Sarah. Allow me to explain some of the unspoken rules:
- Comic Sans is ugly and childish, as well as overused.
- Clip art rarely blends well and looks amateurish.
- Photoshop filters are fine when used in conjunction with other things. But simply filtering an image is not good design, it's lazy.
- And Web 2.0-style is a bit overdone now (though I still like it
)
The rest are pretty self-explanatory.