I searched and haven't seen this being discussed yet, so I decided to ask here.
Would it be possible to add an icon to the German Language site, instead of keeping the default one which is automatically generated? I find it quite ugly, and having a proper icon would distinguish this site from the rest, as well as make it look nicer.
The complete custom design (not just the logo) is included in the so-called graduation. Graduation is usually considered when a site consistently receives ten questions per day (see Graduation, site closure, and a clearer outlook on the health of SE sites).
In addition to the custom design, graduation also includes various other changes (e.g. removal of the ‘beta’ part of the name, moderator elections, migration paths, community ads, and increased privilege thresholds); however, the custom design is the largest part of the workload. Therefore, the current process may be divided into two steps: Sites may be considered to graduate without a custom design first, and receive a custom design at some later time (see Design-Independent Graduation is on for early September!). (Limited design changes for graduated sites that wait for their custom design are discussed here, but nothing has been decided or even implemented yet.)
This is quite the opposite direction of the feature request that is expressed in the question. Hence, I take a pessimistic view of this request. However, I am just a moderator and do not decide such things. If a constructive feature request receives clear support and consensus from the community, we can forward the request.
The (or a) first step would be to actually boost the site and in that matter the icon seems to be irrelevant to me. I think I've rarely (if ever) seen more than ten questions per week, so if we want to graduate, we should do something. In the best times we have got 7.5, but my memory might work not that accurately.
My first impression on this site is that a large number of answers and comments I got by asking were somehow arrogance-flavoured. It's not like that that you welcome users and not all people understand that attitude. We might need a better FAQ section with a concise flow-diagram about what new users must do, so that we don't answer (resp. comment) harshly and refer to that procedure instead, in order to keep a good and clean content here.
