Way of removing the big colored letter next to the sender (or receiver? not sure which one it’s next to or what its purpose or usefulness is). Is there a way of removing this eye-straining rubbish? This is an email client, and therefore (in my mind anyway), the most important thing on the page is the ‘email’, whereas this horrible bold color is now the most prominent thing on the page. What value is it supposed to add? I can already see the sender and receiver, why do I need this extra (real-estate stealing) graphic there? Anyway, somebody might want it I guess (though I literally have no idea why or whom), but I don’t, and would like a way of removing this atrocious piece of UI design.
In his reply to my somewhat related question “Michal Burger, Official Rep” pointed me to the avatar settings: Settings->Contacts->(General->)Avatars. There you can disable the “Show monograms when no other avatar is found” checkbox. If you have no avatar icons for your contacts and the checkbox right above also disabled (“Download avatars from external sources”) you will see a gray picture instead of the colored letters which might be a little less distracting than the colored letters thing.