Currently it looks kinda 3d-ish. Not really modern. See Plasma's one, simple, flat, looks better: http://imgur.com/7SKfMe3 It should always be circle like thay. Another thing could be improved is when the text is small enough, it should be just a circle without any text inside.
The notification badge look was chosen because it provides always good contrast even with full transparent panel backgrounds and any desktop background whitish or darkish
Hmm... The badge text always has its own background with a border, see the Plasma's one, it's the blue circle with black border, so I think it does not depend on the desktop background.
Same badge style is also used for audio indicator and shortcuts badges, so any new proposal and mockups should provide design for all of them and with panel background or not and different desktop backgrounds in order to compare
Git commit 30f3145f95a9c6683dd76dc316b74b0e38f85e98 by Michail Vourlakos. Committed on 10/07/2019 at 15:34. Pushed by mvourlakos into branch 'master'. Introduce Flat and 3D style for Badges --the user can now choose to enable or NOT 3D style for all badges through Latte Global Preferences window. By default the Flat style is preferred M +7 -0 app/settings/settingsdialog.cpp M +60 -4 app/settings/settingsdialog.ui M +19 -0 app/settings/universalsettings.cpp M +6 -0 app/settings/universalsettings.h M +2 -0 containment/package/contents/ui/applet/ShortcutBadge.qml M +1 -0 containment/package/contents/ui/main.qml M +7 -1 declarativeimports/components/BadgeText.qml M +1 -0 plasmoid/package/contents/ui/main.qml M +2 -0 plasmoid/package/contents/ui/task/AudioStream.qml M +1 -1 plasmoid/package/contents/ui/task/ProgressOverlay.qml M +1 -0 plasmoid/package/contents/ui/task/ShortcutBadge.qml https://commits.kde.org/latte-dock/30f3145f95a9c6683dd76dc316b74b0e38f85e98