Hunting for a great style WITH matching icons...
 

Some styles are great, but they use standard graphics (those shipped with vBulletin).

A pet peeve of mine, for instance, is that "Thumbs up" icon that ships with vBulletin. It doesn't look good on most background.

Could anyone recommend a style where all graphics have re-designed to fit the style more adequately?

um, this section is for releases ;)

there are some great style on vb.org,, if your looking for a paid style, I've been working on a list of sites here..


Paid vBulletin Skins and Styles

You will seldom find that many styles (paid) are accompanied by graphics (button sets, smilies small images etc) that are of high quality of the style they are supposed to compliment mostly due to the fact that alot of styles use stock images whther it's vb default or custom. Unless the forum has an adequate graphic designer to finish off the style then you are (nearly always) stuck with taccy images. Don't get me wrong, there's some good designers who have released nice graphics but they are very far and few between. :)

You completely understand my point, I believe.

It's great that styling is modular...you have your templates, your style sheets, your phrases, your icons, your smilies, your avatars, etc. and you can mix and match.

Yet, it makes no sense to develop a great set of templates and style sheets, if your graphics are not specifically designed to complement them.

As you said, a great many designers seem to re-use their graphics way too much, from style to style to style.

That's why this is a quest for me...I am not sure if there is a designer out there who sees all the parts as being complementary and interdependent.