The original Amiga OS had to concentrate on the essentials. There was much thought going into details. Icons looked the way they looked, because one found that the image
a) represented the idea best
b) was visible an clear on every monitor by people with moderate eyesight
Todays criteria seem to be: its coooler! It´s mooore!
I have to admit I like Workbench 1.x look very much these days. 2.x was complete miss shot in visuals.
And I have to admit I sort of like OS4's retro look.
But I dont see any reason to use more colours when we have true colour gfx cards available. I liked my 8 colour MagicWB very much but it was in 90s. Glowicons on my 3.1 were not bad either. But I can always boot my A500 to get my Workbench 1.3 fix.
MUI has a lot of eyecandy and unfortunately is helping you to create interfaces with more buttons than your user really wants. If you really think about how the software is used you will find that less is almost always more.
In Amiga software less buttons usually meant no buttons at all. I recall many utilities which were completely menu driven without single button in window except standard close/depth arrange buttons. Preferences system is often completely tooltype driven and visuals are locked to topaz/8.
