May I suggest that you get ahold of a copy of Alan Cooper's "About Face" (IDG Books)? Alan Cooper was one of the chief architects of Visual Basic and he has some very intertesting thoughts on User Interfaces. As it turns out, the most boring-to-look-at forms might be the best. The name of the game is productivity and though no two people will agree on what is attractive to the eye, a bunch of people who perform the same task will generally agree on the easiest way to do it.

If you really want to be a hero in form design, get some end users to use them for a while and let them tell you how to improve them. Neighbors, aunts, uncles, high-school kids, or best of all, clients.