The RHEL splash at least has some color (true, most of that is due to the RH logo.) Note: I am not a designer by any stretch, so I don't have specific suggestions. But I certainly think it could be better. :)
agreed Bill, perhaps we should ask for community help here too? (similar to the backgrounds)
Diana did the RHEL gdm login, gnome splash screen and background work. However for Fedora she emailed the fedora-* list for background images.
The results from fedora-desktop-list for backgrounds weren't things we'd want to use as the default though.
True, but that is not necessarily the fault of the fedora-desktop-list. There is a pretty big list of things we should have done better. Anyway, my point is not that emailing the list is going to get us the background we want, but that we need to remember to be good community members and ask for involvement.
There hasn't been any activity on this bug for a long time. Also, the GDM splash screen has changed since this version of rawhide. If you still think this is a design issue, then open a new bug.