Announcements are getting missed - bell icon isn't cutting it

Right now announcements only show up behind a small bell icon, and it's really easy to miss. Domien didn't notice the "Last Call: Street Food" announcement until I sent him a screenshot of it. Once he looked closer, he realized he'd missed several others too, including the platform update posts and the welcome message.

If someone who's in the platform daily and closely involved with the community is missing these, regular members are almost certainly missing them too.

On our old WordPress site we had a banner-style announcement that showed right on the page without needing to click anything. Something similar here (a persistent banner or dismissible top bar) would go a long way. Right now it feels like the alerts are buried behind an icon nobody thinks to check.