Daniel, are you primarily asking about feel or looks? I’m a total novice, but I have found that emulating the masters has been very helpful. I take a knife that I love and study it. How far up or down the knife maker cut the well with respect (proportion) to the rest of the knife... how wide is the well... what angles did the maker use to transition to the belly of the handle.... etc. It’s funny that every time I go slow and really put in study time into the design, everything seems to work out nicely. I always make sure to change one thing... this forces me to adapt and, therefore, learn something. I know this is probably not much help, but I find that it helps me.
I have said this before but every time I try to create something new I always find a knife that has the same general shape. After this happened enough times I decided to concentrate more on execution than originality. When I was learning to play the drums a friend once told me to start playing in a group early even if I did not feel I was "good" enough because it would help me grow quicker. He was correct. I applied the same principal here and it has worked out well for me. No, my work is not as good as DE-Mo's but I post some of it any way because I learn from it. I have also found myself in a moment where I was going to just accept a flaw I saw in my work and then I thought "No, the forum guys will call me on it" (in a nice way) so I hang in there until it is fixed. It really does help.
I have used his profiles many times with small changes to suit my tastes there is also a lot of other useful info on his site. Another book I have just read is 101 Knife Designs by Murray Carter. He talks a good bit about design so it is worth the read plus there are some included knife templates in the back of the book.
