Don't you think it's time to do another kind of re-skin? I think we should, so let's re-skin it. The buttons would look like the ones in the party options, expect it's round and has a picture. So we have the gear icon. Make it into a slow-moving gear. Sure, you can also have the option to turn off the animation and have a picture of a gear.
Next, we have a "Help" tab. Instead, how about make the question mark shine? Yes, the tab circle will be re-skinned. The question mark should have textures of blue to purple.
Another tab is the social tab. It features a pawn-ish like. We are knights, so how about we replace that with a knight? It should have a 2* cobalt helm facing left. I'm not talking about the icon in your arsenal. I'm talking about how it looks in the game and putting it as a social icon. The textures would be black.
We now move on to the event hub. I don't really understand how the icon serves as a event hub. I only see lines. So, I think we should replace it with the Spiral knights icon with the bubbles/lines. Inside, it could have some kind of fancy writing (No, you cannot read them, it would be 100% impossible). It should have the main color of the Spiral knights Icon. I'm not talking about the text, I'm talking about the icon with the sword.
Last but not least, we have the Spiral uplink. Why don't we have a newspaper + mail? When there is a new uplink or mail, the little icon will pop up and make a little animation. It would go bigger and smaller. It serves as an animation on when you get something new. Since people have problems, you can of course, turn it off.
The background of each tab would be a blue color or a little blue with a good texture. Two tabs out of the five have animations that you can turn off. So if you like this idea, you can give a +1 so this can be supported and if you hate it and want to rage, talk to the wall about it. Thanks.
I don't see the point to making the icons more flashy and distracting. Simple is often better when it comes to functionality.