One new feature in Movable Type is the ability to specify Alternative Templates for your administrative area. This means that you can modify the templates that make up the "look" of your MT back-end without fear that the next time you upgrade you'll overwrite all your hard work (it's happened a few times with me, I know how frustrating that can be).

With a simple addition to your mt.cfg MT will look in a new location first for changed templates (and if it doesn't find one, it'll use the default one).

The other thing you can do is change the CSS in styles.css, so you can not only fiddle with what's displayed you can change the entire layout and colour scheme!

Six Apart published an article on both these methods just a few days ago.

There are a few good examples of what you can do by changing the CSS over on Flickr. A good starting point I think you'll agree.

I've taken some of the better ideas from those screenshots to put together my own interface design, and I'm pretty happy with it so far. Check out the Templates page shown in the picture below. :)