Yes - that sort of thing would be useful. To some extent this is the sort of thing bootstrap like frameworks are giving people. A default visual design that, well, doesn't suck ;-)

A few other things that I suggest to folk who don't have design skills in-house:

* Pick a single font face and 3 sizes and use throughout

* Pick a palette of five colours (use kuler or something) and use throughout

* Go mobile-first (not because of the 'mobile' - but because of the constraints - it forces a focus on core features & usability)

The problem is that there's a fine line between giving people some rough rules of thumb to help them - and people then taking this sort of advice and seeing it as "best practice" and applying it inappropriately.

Just a note here, a single font face is boring. I prefer picking a serif and a sans serif font, using one for the headings and one for content text.

Boring? Depends how you use it. You can do a lot with weight, size, colour, etc.

Going for a serif/sans-serif pairing is a classic choice - and can also work well. But it can also lead to more opportunities to get things "wrong".

Constraints are useful in design.

Also in most UX situations boring is way better than bad ;-)

Love the dirty tricks idea, thanks :)