How can a programmer learn to make a GUI?

Question

Delphi

Good afternoon. I am a freelance programmer. I write databases + muzzles for them according to the needs of customers. Development environment - RAD Studio Delphi XE4, rarely Qt5.
Customers are not demanding on the GUI, grid lines/layers help to align components/widgets and make the appearance of the program slender. But aligned buttons != usable and beautiful GUI.
In this connection, the question is: what can you read about designing the application interface (primarily desktop-windows applications)?
Thank you all in advance.

Answer 1

Read "Alan Cooper on the interface. Fundamentals of interaction design." This is such a general book that explains in which direction you need to think when creating a GUI, and Desktop is a special case.
On books.ru, it costs 99 rubles in e-mail Alain Cooper. About the interface. , but it can be easily found in "free access".