Proven solution strategies should be used for well known problems. If you aren't familiar with façades, observers, factory methods, singleton or visitor, then you need to read Design Patterns, by Erich Gamma, et al., and learn these basic patterns.

Patterns provide a higher level of abstraction to easily communicate and discuss design concepts. If you write enterprise software (as opposed to packaged, embedded, or other types), then the basic design vocabulary you need can be found in Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture, by Martin Fowler.

One area not covered by PoEAA is messaging, which is covered in the followup book Enterprise Integration Patterns, by Gregor Hohpe & Bobby Woolf. Messaging, as opposed to file transfer or shared databases, is a backbone of modern architectures, such as Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), and this book is well on it's way to becomming a classic.