Literature on layout?

Question

css

Guys, help me out.
I have always developed only internal applications, there is no time for design - everything is square, the main thing is that it works.
Recently, they began to turn to me with requests to create websites, more precisely, they turned to me before, but refused, and recently I got into an accident, I needed the money urgently, I took it. And since I am not a designer at all, I warn everyone about this, and usually everything is decided by buying a template. And then the customers made sketches on paper, they didn’t find anything similar - they repeated it. They seem to be satisfied, but the feeling that the template seems to be chopped with an ax does not leave me (the width is fixed). I have no sense of the small details that breathe life into the design.
I would like to talk to a guru in this business - we have a small city, local designers are amateurs.
In general, there may be some kind of literature, not so read and forgotten, but a really good book written by a professional, after reading which ideas about design change.

Answer 1

Look at this www.ozon.ru/context/detail/id/4265917/
Read the articles:
habrahabr.ru/post/119127/
habrahabr.ru/post/156645/ - make it easier for yourself to write CSS with a preprocessor. I recommend SASS or Stylus if you like Node.JS habrahabr.ru/post/125247/ And
so ,
for inspiration, read : tympanus.net/codrops/ - well, it goes without saying :)

Answer 2

take something from the
bootstrap
foundation
HTML KickStart and use it, that's enough.

Answer 3

Knowledge in the field of css is quite confident. I'm more interested in design techniques. Here the customer gave me the colors, schematically showed what and where should be. They like it, but honestly it looks like nothing. Those. I'm interested in the design, not the css implementation.