I do quite a bit of programming in my work, which I'm comfortable with, but recently I've being trying to do some web-design for non-work related reasons.

I've got a Drupal site up and running, and added some content.

But they all look fairly basic. Header with some content. It doesn't look particularly polished. Anyway, as an example, what I wanted to do was make some "bubbles", each with some text in them.

From a programmers point of view, say:

bubble(question_text, answer_text) might expand to a box with some border, with "Question: " + question_text then "Answer: " + answer_text.

Of course I'd have lots of these bubbles, but I'd like to change their look and feel in one place, so simple HTML would be a maintainable nightmare. I also want to lay them out on the screen in some fashion.

I was thinking a mixture of javascript and CSS, or possibly use PHP which Drupal uses.

On the other hand, I fear I might be taking a 1990s approach to this, and that there's actually tools available now that make this process a lot easier.

I'm just wondering what the best approach to this sort of task is? Should I be using offline web design software and copying the code to Drupal, and if so, any recommendations?

I'm sorry if my question is a bit vague, because I'm not really sure what question I should be asking. I'd appreciate if you answer and comment, and I'll try my best to be more specific as I understand more.