I don't change mine very often. I've used the same dragon avatar (as well as the same username, which I made up in literally 30 seconds, thinking I wouldn't use it for very long) since I started foruming some years ago. The first forum I registered for, and the first forum I called home, won't let users have custom avatars or titles until they wrote 1337 posts, and up until they switched from UBB to vB, you had to request that an admin change your avatar.

Because of this, users with a CI (or "custom icon" as they were commonly referred to), were always recognized as oldbies, or popularity was somewhat based on whether one had a CI, and users didn't change their avatars often as a result of this recognition.

I have the current moomba avatar in place for the duration of the elections currently taking place, and I'll probably go back to the dragon after they're over.

This forum also had signatures turned off completely, so I haven't designed a lot of signatures over the years. Even now, if a forum allows signatures, I still turn them off in the user cp, because they clutter up the page and detract from the content of the posts. I only have a signature there right now because of the elections, and I've been web and graphic designing for quite a few years, so I enjoyed the opportunity to open up Photoshop. Because of this, and because I've lightened up on my sig hating, I may have a small sig after the elections are over. I just need something to link to .