We are using them as countdowns to launch dates / milestones within our project

That is useful, however, it does look a tad silly having a small panel within a dashboard panel when that is the only thing shown.

In our wiki of how projects should be labeled, coloured etc, we have icons to define the type, and then the colour to define a group.

I would like to see more icons for projects (obviously from D10529), as we are using them to tag tasks etc as Features, Bugs, Defects, Enhancements, Design, and then our actual projects as well.