When a newspaper lays-off half its graphic artists and designers...

... you get page one presentations like this!

Take a look at today's The Sydney Morning Herald front page. Looks okay, I suppose. A bit dense and text-heavy perhaps. Not a lot of visual pizazz. But they do have an interesting (if pretty grim) main picture. But wait, what's with those arrows?

It looks like someone's child has 'air-brushed' (badly) an arrow in Photoshop and plonked it onto the photo a few times using their pagination software (Cyber, I think it's called). Clicking the above rag-out enlarges it to reveal how Press Display picks up the text and image boxes overlaying the image too.

It's not very slick, is it? Actually, it's laughably hideous, utterly unprofessional and rather humiliating. Unless of course I'm missing a 'graffiti redesign' announcement.

Fairfax Media, The Sydney Morning Herald's owner, recently laid-off half of the title's graphic artists and designers, with the money saved from these job cuts to be spent on new reporters.

Hmmm, right, who needs good visuals? Not Fairfax newspapers any more it would seem.