>>13770363I had some web design classes. I'm not a web design master but I can say for sure that he can keep the colour scheme and organise the site some other way.
Drop down buttons, different bar for the main links, some bold here and there, a teensy bit bigger font, maybe change all the fonts to white or make the titles and main links white and a sub titles and sub links black like they are now.
It's not too hard but help a huge deal in terms of how easy it is to find stuff, it also helps in the overall design and organisation since people can tell where one stuff ends and another beggins.
Some lines here and there wouldn't hurt either.
Actually, I think he would probably accept it better if he was shown some preview of how things would become AND (important part here) a button where you could go back to the older design if you wished to.
This would give the users time to adapt to the new one and, if he wanted, we could make a kind of opinion board so that users of the site could share their opinions on the new design.
If many people liked it maybe he would accept the change, also other people wouldn't complain because it would be some kind of majority vote.