Reila, that's a great idea! That makes the game look way more beautiful, and will definitely help give the players a sense of scene and transition. I love it! Thanks for the suggestion!
Your idea of clickable avatars is elegant and clever. That will take a little longer to implement, but again I think it's a really good idea. One of the big new features in the upcoming version (1.3) is randomly generated males – having the game create appropriate face models for them would be a great way to differentiate them. (I liked your drawing of Max, by the way.)
I'm working on the 1.3 release right now, but I'll probably implement the location banners as a 1.3.1 update a couple of days afterwards. Thanks again, Reila, it's a really elegant improvement!