Aesthetic Change Request

After using this board for a while, I'm having some visual problems with the indicator that shows that there's more info under a board topic.

For example -- if you start at the absolute top, you'll see that there are indicators in the left hand column (Peaches) that help to call out whether there's new content to be read. Grey = No new content, Full glowing peach = new content, and if you look closely, a 20% glowing peach that shows there's children "discussion area" new content to be read under that main topic. Problem is, I cant really RELIABLY see that there's new content under the child forums, and wind up missing it.

So, to drill down a bit, follow this flow. From the top, there's all of the major groupings of the discussion areas under which are the individual discussion areas (GREY peaches or PEACH peaches). Take the COMPUTER FORUMS for example: under AMUG > Computer Forums, there's a "master group" called "MACINTOSH (all about Macs)". Using the current Iconography, if there's a posting immediately under the MACINTOSH section (not under the children, directly under the parent) the Icon at that AMUG forum top level will be a glowing "peach". If there's a posting under one of the child boards (Intel Macs, Mac Desktops, Mac Portables, ...) then the top level icon ("MACINTOSH (all about Macs)") will have a "half hue" of a glowing peach to it, indicating that one of the child groups has messages to read. This I understand.

What I'm having a hard time visually with is the coloration of the "half hue" peach. I really cant tell the difference (quickly) between a Greyed Peach (no new postings) and the Half Hue peach (postings in a child group). So -- can we do one of the following ..

1) Change the pattern (increase the hue value, Pattern the colorization so that there's something more discernable) that may affect the "saturation" of the icon colorization to something more discernable than it is now?

or

2) Change the icon itself to indicate that one of the children has traffic and remove the concept of "half hue" in the icons.

EG: Take the current Icon, duplicate it, shrink it to 25% of the size of the parent, put it in front of the Parent Icon at the lower right (or left) corner so that you see a "parent / child" relationship. The Child icon would be full saturation, and depending on the content under the parent topic, the parent icon would be at a lower saturation or a full saturation depending on the content immediately below.

So -- The combinations of iconography might be:

Greyed out, no child -- No New messages. This would also be the icon if the child groups have no new content AND the parent group has no new content.

Full Saturation icon, no Child -- This topic has new messages attached directly to this discussion area. (EG: you click into it and you'd see the new messages to be read). If the message area is a compound area (has a discussion area and there are child discussion areas) and none of the child areas have new traffic, show the full icon (no child)

Full Saturation Parent icon with Full saturation Child Icon on top -- Discussion area immediately under has new content AND one or more child forums have new content

Grey Parent icon with Full Hue Child Icon on top -- Discussion area immediately under has NO new content and one or more child forums have new content

Can this be done?

Thanks (your visually challenged program director)

Mike