Why waste time trying to make gnome3 look different. I gained nothing when I shifted to gnome3 and lost a lot. I shifted to mint w/cinnamon and see no reason to go back.
I found that everything I did in gnome3 took more steps...ie more clicks, more resizing, more drilling down, and on top of it all one additional click that does nothing more then get you off that stupid, useless page that is your faux desktop. For me and the way I use my computers this is not a step forward, but two steps back.
If gnome3 was on a smart phone, or a tablet, and I ran one application at a time, always full screen, it would be pretty, and get the job done. But I run this on a desktop computer with fair horse power, lots of memory, and with a BIG monitor, just so that I can have several things going on at once and see them all without a lot of dragging, drilling down, resizing, and general piddling around every time I sit down. I can do everything I need to with Gnome3, it is just more work.
Not sure what the gnome folks were thinking. I've heard it said that they were enamored with OS-X, don't know. However at work I have a very nice brand new iMac with Lion on it, and it is much easier to use and has a very different orientation then gnome3.