There's a Puzzled Businessman for Every Occasion

From today's Star Tribune business section, the top half of two adjacent pages:


Note that both stock illustrations are credited to istockphoto.com. Both feature the back of a generic white businessMAN figure as he tries to figure something out in a symbolic but heavy-handed way.

Would it have made any difference if the dollar sign image had been used with the stock-savant story and vice versa? No, in fact, the decision headline probably works a bit better with the multiple-arrow illustration. I'm not quite sure what the dollar-sign-shadow-figure-that-might-be-a-deep-hole-in-the-ground image is supposed to mean, though.

One thing I do know for sure: the designers of these two pages were phoning it in.