The reason for the light grey on white / dark grey on black thing is, that I want to give the impression of an embossed / engraved text in both the IC and the gear. I agree with the IC text being a bit hard to read at monitors with lower brightness, so I changed that and tried to get the other way ICs can be labeled - by printing. Do you think that worked out?
I also made the light grey text a tad darker as sugested in Brumbys version, just a bit less dark.
Regarding the rebuilding thing: That is my intention, I wanted to do a little super short intro, sticking stuff together and fading over to the big logo picture, everything in not more than 10 seconds. I just have to get a gear that is big enough...