[hakaaak]

I think "dreadful" is really harsh. Every site should not look like default bootstrap. That would be incredibly boring.

But, that said, I think it would have been better without everything between the font change and the color scheme change removed. For example, the icon is an additional unnecessary visual element- either use text or an icon- if you have both it means that one or the other is insufficient on their own and that is a bad design smell -> simplify! Textures are ok, but a bad example- the only change I could tell was the missing horizontal rules/grey lines. The alpine background- meh, even for a ski lodge- this isn't a cheesy blog. The CSS change I could barely tell.

[uxwtf]

Agree that adding an icon on the button is useless, but as I work with developers, I see that it's the way some developers understand UI and UX - adding an icon equals designing! As for the textures, I suggest myself everybody using subtle patterns, but, again, the mistake here is adding an extra alpine background image: the thing I saw several times when developers tried to make efforts in UI, lol! But the good thing is that this topic really makes people react!

[mcgwiz]

The CSS change is only visible in the screenshot that introduced the background image. In that screenshot, a white glow effect has been applied to the main header.