The New Wall Street Journal

Hmm! I wonder who they got to do this - Roger Black? Lucie Lacava? I can't imagine either of them would do something this bland. Some functional upgrades seem good, but it seems to throw away all the elements that *made* the WSJ brand (the Grey Lady). It has blanded itself out, gone suburban. Some of it is downright horrible (that Personal Journal front section is the most crowded layout I've ever seen) and incorporates tired design trends (Pictures in, around, and above the masthead? How...1990 - about when every paper "USA TODAY-ed" themselves to death. One of Lucie Lacava's excellent redesigns, the Montreal daily La Presse, has started verging from the original, elegant redesign to the point where I saw the masthead pushed down to nearly the middle fold of the paper recently.)
A better approach would have been to let Jonathan Hoefler at it and reinvest in the classical elements that worked; a redrawn font for higher-resolution offset printing, subtly tweaked column grids and proportions that accomodate better graphics. Colour has its place, yes, but on the WSJ the lack of colour was an *asset* that they have now devalued. It has the falseness of a Turner colourized movie. If they were going to go full colour, they might as well have redesigned it from scratch - this looks like a weird hybrid.