WordPress 2.7 has been released these days and comes with some updates to the backend design. I think most of you already know that there is a new login-section. The design is now equal to the new backend's and the team did only little changes.
From my point of view this is very important to an all-inclusive-package, like a theme – or a corporate design.
The CSS changed a bit and if anybody wants to customize the login-section, I will show how to achieve it. The CSS is also included as a good starting point for your own custom design.

Loading the Stylesheet

I have to use a simple function, which I put in functions.php of the current theme and integrate it via hook login_head into the login-head to load the css for the login-section. This will make the custom css being referenced only by one specific theme and if I switch to a different, a different css will also be loaded.

// custom login for theme
// folder themes/theme_name/custom-login/
function fb_custom_login() {
	echo '<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="' . get_bloginfo('template_directory') . '/custom-login/custom-login.css" />';
}
 
add_action('login_head', 'fb_custom_login');

The stylesheet comes with the name custom-login.css and is located in /custom-login in the folder of the theme.

The Stylesheet

Like I already said, here is tiny example, which includes classes and id's of the login-section, so you can customize it very easily.

html {
background-color: #fff;
}

#login form {
padding-top: 100px;
}
#login form .submit input {
border-color: #bcb38f !important;
color: #777 !important;
}
#login form .submit input:hover {
border-color: #bcb38f !important;
color: #bcb38f !important;
}
#login h1 {
display: none;
}
.login #nav a {
color: #777 !important;
}
.login #nav a:hover {
color: #bcb38f !important;
}

#wphead img, #wphead h1 {
display: none;
}
#wphead {
height: 100px;
}
#wphead-info {
padding-top: 27px;
}

#footer {
display: none;
}
#footer_custom {
clear: both;
text-align: center;
width: 500px;
margin: auto;
height: 100px;
}
#footer_custom .docs {
padding-top: 0px;
line-height: 100%;
}
#footer_image {
border:none;
}

The example above is just one way to customize the style. As usual there are unlimited possibilities with css and the art of it. A recommendational note from me, is to use the Firebug extension, which is really helpful when customizing css live. I can't mention this enough.