Hmm.... so no chance for old design. That is sad. For new design I've only one thing to say: I'm completely disoriented.

And .... If you look at the projects. The picture on the left side. Yes, this one, which is flickeering so, that I've a pain in my eyes. It's intentional?

I'm not going to say there aren't problems with the new layout. HOWEVER, look at it like this:

The 'old' design has been refined over the last two or three years (its current iteration), and the basis of that design is probably 6 or 7 years old. You're looking at it with at least 6 years of user feedback and changes in response to the community.

The new theme has... 4 days of user feedback. We're not going to change it back. In a few months, you'll be looking at the archive.org cache and wondering how we ever got by with the old layout.

I prefer the old look of the blog and new projects on the main page like it was.
I guess website developers are just like engineers. They can never leave well enough alone.
They're always changing something even if it works great and people like it.