So here’s the next potential design for the application. This one is intentionally completely different from first one and has a much more contrasting colour 
scheme. It is also built using the 960 grid system CSS framework, so can easily be adopted to have the same structure as the variations shown in design 1.
Even though there’s more colours and more ‘going on’ it doesn’t seem to distract from the main content, as it’s nicely separated from the rest of the UI by the bold colour differences.
So what are your thoughts on this one compared to the previous one?
Hmmm, this definitely has more colour then design 1, but IMHO Design 1 still looks much nicer overall. Also playing about with the structure in Firebug, it looks ‘odd’ when you mimic the structures of design 1, such as 2 side columns on the right, one on each side etc, so there seems to be much less flexibility with this one. So in conclusion, this design fails to carry the strengths of the previous design, despite the added color as per my previous suggestion.
Thanks David, some valid points made.
You’re right, I played about with the same structure variations as in Design 1, and they don’t look right, I think it might be to do with the fact the content in design 1 is in a differant colour container from the background with breaks it up a bit more.
In case you havn’t seen, I’ve updated Design 1 to have some colour, you can see the result here. Let me know what you think (either here or in the design 1 thread)
Thanks again =)