Obviously this particular task is very expensive, and it is hard to see how it can get paid for. We get a lot of feedback to improve how Composr looks (mostly very vague, from people who don't give anything back to the community). I think it comes from people now used to amazing consumer-grade interfaces on things like iOS and Facebook.
Hopefully some enthusiastic designer(s) can contribute to it out of their own desire to add to the product.
Current thinking is to kill the default theme concept, and instead have an official 'base' theme (like current default, but a bit simpler, and using some CSS3) and a 'full on' theme that makes lots of assumptions but looks great.
Full discussion:
http://compo.sr/forum/topicview/misc/general/more-effort-for-default.htm
Fewer borders
Fewer boxes
Less on screen...
...and make things bigger to compensate
...and use more white-space
(The above 2 points particularly are important for touch interfaces)
More icons, in fact possibly an icon for every button and link
Gradients all over, pretty much every level on the visual hierarchy has a CSS gradient in modern designs
And often curved borders too
Effects such as changing an icon from black&weight to colour upon mouse over
Wider colour palette (Composr is essentially monochromatic due to the theme wizard design)
Hopefully some enthusiastic designer(s) can contribute to it out of their own desire to add to the product.
Full discussion:
http://compo.sr/forum/topicview/misc/general/more-effort-for-default.htm