I have recently blogged on my Employer’s blog about the SharePoint 2010 AspMenu and how to customize it using jQuery and CSS tricks to add images and make it more appealing for public Internet sites, as part of the branding.
You can read it here: Credera Blog (http://blogs.credera.com/2011/06/02/customizing-the-sharepoint-2010-menu-with-css-and-jquery/)
Hope you enjoy it!