Controversial territory

The design of the United Kingdom’s new coinage was unveiled today.

From a design point of view the new coins look bad. Basically a designer has been allowed to chop up the national “logos” and present the resulting mish-mash as a brave and original reinterpretation of the previous design. This chopping-up-of-logos (I feel it should have its own verb - logoicide?) happens so often in advertising that whenever I brief the creative department (“the studio”) on a client campaign I make a point of telling the creatives “don’t muck up the logos”, usually adding at the end of the briefing “if you muck up the logos I am taking the job away from you” (saying this slowly, so they know I am not joking).

I have learned (from bitter experience - and the inclusion of “bitter” in this phrase does not mean the cheap use of a cliché but actual experience that is bitterly painful) that you should never show the client a design where the company logo has been chopped up (or coloured green and lavender, or even simply reversed out of black) - the client will never ever forgive you or trust you again.

It is the one thing you must never do.

Even if the studio has stalled you for days and finally gives you the mock-ups just as you are walking out of the door on the way to see the client, if the logo has been “reinterpreted” you must cancel the meeting and make them do the design again.



The other controversial aspect of this news item is that Britannia has been removed from the everyday coinage (she is still on the silver bullion coin - above).

Why is the government going out of its way to annoy people over such an issue? Child poverty targets are failing, the bloody (and illegal in Iraq’s case) wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are continuing, the greed and mendacity and nepotism of MPs remains unchecked, immigration policy has floundered, mortgages are drying up and taxes (including council taxes) are rising. With all these serious issues to deal with, why is the government offending ordinary people by unilaterally taking away a symbol they value?

I rang Rachel (one of the upstairs executives) earlier and during our talk asked her if she had seen the new coinage and she repeated her familiar verdict: “I’m with Catherine Tate’s Nan on this one - what a load of old…”



Above: the Britannia - very friendly corner pub (everyone talks to you) but so small you are half on the pavement, especially when the doors are open.

The government has strayed into this controversial territory before. Culture Minister Margaret Hodge attacked the “Proms” concerts for being jingoistic, then had to retract and jump through any number of hoops to prove she was not anti-Rule Britannia. Number Ten also felt it necessary to make retractions on her behalf.

More on the new coinage: http://www.royalmint.com/newdesigns/designsRevealed.aspx (“symptomatic of the fragmentation of the United Kingdom”).

More on Margaret Hodge: http://ministers.culture.gov.uk/margarethodgediary/

More on the verdict of Catherine Tate’s Nan (comes right at the end): http://video.aol.com/video-detail/catherine-tate-show-nan-on-the-new-paul-ogrady-show-sketch/4001138346

Laughed at

Once again, at 12 noon today, Prime Minister’s Questions appeared on BBC2. Instead of the Prime Minister, Harriet Harman substituted, exchanging jokes with William Hague (who seemed to have filled the Opposition camera frame with women, so that a reasonably youthful and gender-inclusive image was created). In the introduction to PMQs, Daily Politics co-presenter Jenny Scott regretted that Liberal-Democrat Leader Nick “Cleggover” was not participating (a pun on “leg-over” which is a United Kingdom colloquial expression for sexual congress - a reference to Nick Clegg’s claim in GQ magazine to have had thirty sexual partners).



Nick Clegg was very foolish to have answered a variation of the Britney Spears “are you still a virgin” question, as he has opened up a narrative path for other journalists to follow. Does “under thirty” mean “29 sexual partners and counting”, in which case when will he reach number thirty? And who (one can imagine the Editor of The Sun asking) are these thirty or so women, and what are the thirty or so stories they have to tell?

British political sex “scandals” sell newspapers. And by boasting (for it obviously was a sort of boast) of thirty conquests Nick Clegg has just handed over to the media the potential for thirty episodes in a long-running saga that could possibly keep going through the summer season (“so assuming he started in 1983 when he was sixteen and stopped when he got married in 2000 he was changing sexual partners on average every seven months - that’s a lot of f--k buddies even for a politician…”). If he was a poor lover he will be laughed at; if he was a great lover he will be admired and laughed at; if it turns out to be mostly fantasy and fabrication (since his claim is well above the global average) he will be jeered and laughed at.



A quick look through the files upstairs reveals that David Miliband gave an interview to GQ magazine two years ago. It is a model of sober propriety, conducted by Darius Sanai (an alumnus of City University’s Journalism course). GQ magazine is part of Condé Nast which is run by Nicholas Coleridge (from the same family as the poet Samuel Coleridge) the ultra-civilised pro-Indian former employer of one of the Barnett sisters (and in a very oblique connection with the Nick Clegg interview, one of Nicholas Coleridge’s novels was nominated for the Literary Review's Bad Sex Award - possibly this has set an unintended “culture” at the magazine group).

More on Harriet Harman: http://www.harrietharman.org/

More on William Hague: http://www.conservatives.com/tile.do?def=people.person.page&personID=4680

More on Nick Clegg: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7324541.stm
and also
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/apr/01/nickclegg.pressandpublishing
and also
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article984233.ece

More on the average number of sexual partners: http://www.durex.com/cm/gss2004Content.asp?intQid=401

Yawning at one o’clock in the afternoon

At lunchtime I went into the Conference Room and watched Prime Minister’s Questions. It was very boring - especially the sycophantic planted questions (which are mostly along the lines of “Does the Prime Minister agree that all his policies are wonderful”). And I thought MPs were not supposed to read out long prepared questions?

After Prime Minister’s Questions there was about twenty minutes of Andrew Neil in the studio, and then just as I was getting up to go back to my desk the cameras returned to Westminster.

In the House of Commons Gordon Brown was at the despatch box announcing the new national security provisions. On the bench behind him, sharing the camera frame, was Home Secretary Jacqui Smith. Just as the Prime Minister was getting into his stride she gave a theatrical yawn.

Why was the Home Secretary yawning at one o’clock in the afternoon?

Was she exhausted? Was Gordon Brown deathly boring? Or was she trying to make the Prime Minister look silly?