I was stuck in an airport for somewhat longer than anticipated on Tuesday. This gave me plenty of time to take in the first full-colour edition of The Daily Telegraph in all its glory, although not nearly long enough to complete a single clue in its new "toughie" crossword.  

Whether the timing of the switch was by happy accident or design, the sports team in particular must have been jumping for joy. The stitched 20pp tabloid sports section made tremendous use of colour images following a momentous day of sporting activity with the transfer deadline shenanigans around Dimitar Berbatov and the change of ownership at Man City.

Colour was also used to good effect on a bold infographic on the front of the business section, and the whole paper looked brighter and cleaner to me, without being too strident. They need to sort out their house ads, though - the one plugging the Telegraph's business coverage featuring those colourful characters Sir Philip Green and Sir Martin Sorrell looked awfully drab in black-and-white.

Editor Will Lewis has invited reader comments to fullcolour@telegraph.co.uk. At the time of writing this post I couldn't find any feedback, but it will be fascinating to see how the "traditional" Telegraph readers respond to it. Will they love it or loathe it? Back in July when the Sunday Times went full colour it resulted in a flurry of negative posts on the paper's website. The colour switch there also coincided with a redesign, a new font, and some shunting around of fixtures so perhaps the immediate critical reaction was more about the loss of the familiar than an aversion to colour. But it was notable how many comments spoke specifically about the colour aspect: "Awful, like being hit with a sledgehammer...I don't like the blocks of colour (very tabloid!)", "The colour strip at the top of each page is really naff", "Why do we need colour on every bleedin' page?" - you get the drift.

I'm sure News International is more interested in the potential for increased colour ad revenues than the umbrage taken by a handful of stick-in-the-mud readers, but it does show that sometimes you can have too much of a good thing. Finding the right design solutions in a full-colour newspaper age is proving to be a whole new skill in itself.