Shape and look are two different things, and we're mainly talking about overall shape and the way they appear in icons.
Think of it this way. You have three different ship types, each of them presented with a approximately square icon, each with a minor difference, like one has rounded corners, for instance. They're all certainly unique, but very hard to distinguish from each other at a quick glance, because they're essentially all still squares. It would be much easier to learn and browse them if each icon was more unique, for instance one is a triangle, and one is a circle.
That's essentially one part of this mod project. I cut away and mold the originals in a way that brings out more unusual (compared to originals) overall shapes, primarily for the icons, as the original guard post icons all look very much alike. There are no easily identifiable details in some of them. It's possible to learn them, yes, but if they could be made even easier to learn... no harm by adding extra detail. As an example, the Passive Guard Post mod. Tell me one other icon that has something resembling spread bird/angel wings in it.
I can't think of any myself. You only need to remember one detail about that icon/post to easily remember and learn it. (Whether it makes sense for a guard post to have metal wings on it is a different matter entirely.
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This all is of course my opinion and something I thought useful to address with these mods. It's not all just about modding the graphics for the guard posts themselves, the icons are important too. Or rather, the icons have muchly dictated the direction I've taken with the graphic modifications for the structures themselves. The more the icon needs distinguishable details, the more I've altered the structure.