I actually really hate the aforementioned GIF signatures as well; give me a witty quote over the flashy animations anyway. But that's a moot issue, since images still aren't allowed in signatures with the better-lit theme.
I do, however, like seeing avatars under the names of posters. For one thing, it helps to differentiate between people with similar usernames (<+Man-Frog> the worst part is that I keep getting Tv_Themes and Trainman confused); for another, and I believe this point has already been touched on in this thread, avatars can add personality to the user. Without avatars, all you've got in the way of individuality are the custom titles, which, while a cool feature, are involuntary (and thus possibly not as reflective of the User's actual personality).
