Just like the brony fandom itself, the MLP Forums is full of so many creative bronies who are willing to lay out their interest to contribute artistically to the community, however polished or messy it can be. One of these areas, though, that needs catching up is graphic designing, which deals with more than laying out a drawing. It's displaying and visually selling your work in the form of conservation, hierarchy, color, typography, etc. Like the background of both the MLP Forums and now Pony.fm, the weekly rotating banners show this desire to promote some very good design. Despite some weaknesses as what I wrote in my two reviews, we're seemingly on our way towards designing great graphic design.

But there has been one consistent criticism from me lately: the visual hierarchy, mostly due to the inner glow of the navigation, icons, and tabs. Because of the glow, the buttons appear brighter than they should, disturbing the hierarchy.

Earlier today, I reviewed through this thread and noticed that the buttons are missing. The template and positioning for the navigation are available, but not the actual content. Jokuc below posted a better template below, but it still didn't thoroughly help.

What I'm saying here is that without the designs of the buttons, then no matter what hexidecimal color the designers can display or e-mail to the Technical Administration, it's going to be much more difficult to see:

1. the visual hierarchy.
   
2. what the banner would look like as if it's published on the forums — banner and navigation package (rather than like this without the navigation — Credit goes to ~Cider Barrel~ for this great banner).
   

Currently, the only way you can tell if the design is extremely successful is when the banner is displayed online.

Furthermore, because of the lack of navigation comps, you can't tell if the little arrow next to the "View New Content" button will be easily seen when it's either hovered or inactive. In its current state, the arrow camouflages with the pink and is only extremely visible once the cursor hovers over it. If the button and arrow were also available, then this oversight would've been noticed much quicker.

So, if you're able to, along with the template of the banner, I propose including the navigation; tabs; buttons; arrow; etc. in all of its formats: inactive, hovered, and active; the strokes/borders that surround them, and the inner glow effect layering above them. With the buttons available, the designers can see the layout of their banner as if it's displayed online atop the forum and then go back and make changes to solidify it more if needed. With the current resources, you can't see the finished product unless it's online, but the comps of the navigation's availability would make the process much easier.