@birdeen's call - That's something I was planning on providing - setting the default to the new design but allowing users to select the old if they wished. This would probably only be practical for a time as it will be an overhead trying to support both versions. Once we have to migrate to the latest version of vB then all of the old designs will be incompatible anyway, so a forced change is on its way at some stage. Just depends when, and how.
@philadelphia - Trying to keep a simple, clean design that allows attention to focus on the content, not the design, is the objective. Strong colours and bold designs will allways leave us with a divided membership since they are such subjective issues.