Apart from a few tiny revisions in iOS 7 and later, iOS’ notification badge system has appeared mostly unchanged since its conception. Jailbreakers seeking a fresher take on notification badges would do good to check out a newly released jailbreak tweak called CozyBadges by iOS developer NoisyFlake.
As depicted in the multitude of screenshot examples above, CozyBadges replaces the traditional red circular notification badge with something much more subtle — an updated icon label that appears highlighted or colorized when there are missed notifications. Moreover, the label can be configured to display alternative text, assuming the user wants this.