I'd say the biggest change I've seen in banner making is the use of textures and blending modes like hard light, screen, etc. I don't think many people used effects like that until this year or so. Weird how it kind of evolves like that.

Anyway, I've found that if you just go through all the old tutorials in the "Resources and Tutorials" section you can learn a lot.
By the way, I think that would be a better place instead of the Request section.

Mods?
Hoped this helped some, TEW!