Designer Tom Muller earlier today linked on Twitter to a hateful Times article where Emily Gosden rips into the costs of graphic design and branding. This time, it’s the ‘NHS 60’ logo that’s under fire—the argument is that adding a couple of digits to the existing logo shouldn’t have cost £12,000. Yet again, an article in the mainstream press undermines the entire graphic design industry, without actually bothering to consider or research why the costs were as they were. God forbid that there’s anything more to design than ‘just doing it’. And, of course, Emily Gosden is presumably being paid about £3 per article for the Times, because as everyone knows, there’s no consideration or research behind writing—you ‘just do it’, right, Emily?

Tory MP Greg Hands also can’t resist having a pop at the designer scum who clearly ripped off tax payers (unlike London-based Hands himself, whose £300,000 of expenses—including £5,524 for ‘London Supplement’—were clearly all absolutely essential); he says: “Surely adding two digits doesn’t need to be outsourced at all. Civil servants can do this themselves. Modern graphic design packages surely allow anyone with an average brain to design something as good as, or better than, what we see in front of us here.”

Oh, really? Well, this blog likes to go the extra mile itself (and for the staggering fee of nothing at all), and so here’s what would have happened had Hands got his way:

The final brand: smart, stylish, and it probably went through 11 billion revisions to get to this stage, hence the £12,000 fee.

What would have happened if you’d armed a civil servant with Photoshop and told them to create the logo. And you wouldn’t have gotten any actual branding advice and alternative versions of the logo for print/web, and so on.

On Twitter and elsewhere, there’s a bit of a debate brewing right now about whether PRs should be ‘first against the wall’ when the revolution comes, or whether journos are a bunch of grumpy sods for moaning about being deluged by stuff they’ll likely be interested in writing about.

In the technology field, I find it strange journos are getting angry due to receiving press releases. Sure, many are irrelevant, and far too many are written in an absurdly needy manner, but even though I get dozens of these weekly (sometimes daily), I’d rather have more than fewer press releases. They enable me to find out about new stuff for zero effort, and if I’m not interested, a quick ‘delete’ banishes the release forever. (Note to journos claiming they’re annoyed by constant interruptions from PR emails: don’t check your email every time a new one arrives; alternatively, set up notification so you can glance at incoming email and only tend to urgent messages.)

That all said, there are three increasingly common things that irk me regarding PR guys, and so here are some helpful hints:

1. Only phone me for first contact or if something’s urgent. Do not phone me about a 0.0.1 app upgrade that you’ve decided is “revolutionary”. Phone calls are a major distraction—unless your call includes extremely exciting and interesting information, I will hate you.
2. When you’re pimping something you’re doing on the other side of the planet (say, the west coast of the USA or Australia), and I kindly inform you that I’m UK-based, don’t then try to convince me that I should show up via several more emails and phone calls. Yes, I’m sure I’d like to be at CES right now, but unless you buy me a ticket, I’m not going to visit just to see your new gizmo.
3. If you want me to check something out for review, send it to me. Don’t try to convince me to buy it myself because it’s the “Best Thing Ever”. I get very regular requests of this sort, and so even with 59p iPod games I’d be broke by the end of the month if I bought them all.

So Rage Against the Machine got the UK Christmas number one, beating the worst X-Factor song to date by a clear 50,000 sales, almost making up for last year’s dire Alexandra Burke Hallelujah cover beating both Leonard Cohen’s original and Jeff Buckley’s version to the top spot.

If we need a battle next year, I nominate Wire’s Mr Suit from Pink Flag. It’s a bit sweary and it has some nice relevant sentiment for Mr Cowell and company:

MR SUIT
I’m tired of being told what to think
I’m tired of being told what to do
I’m tired of f——ing phonies
That’s right, I’m tired of you

No, no, no, no, no, no, Mr Suit

You can take your f——ing money and shove it up your arse
‘Cause you think you understand, well it’s a f——ing farce
I’m tired of f——ing phonies
That’s right, I’m tired of you

No, no, no, no, no, no, Mr Suit

And if you turn and walk out that door
And take your f——ing money, let me tell you what it’s for
I’m tired of f——ing phonies
That’s right, I’m tired of you

No, no, no, no, no, no, Mr Suit

Happy holidays!

Digital Spy reports on Simon Cowell’s unhappiness regarding the fact his monopoly over the British Christmas number-one might end this year, due to a Facebook campaign to install Rage Against The Machine’s Killing In The Name instead.

The Sun claims Cowell moaned that “musical snobs have ganged up against Joe [McElderry]” and: “If you take me out of the equation, you have a teenager with his first single being attacked by a huge hate mob on Facebook.”

The thing is, you don’t have to be a music snob to be sickened by the factory line Cowell’s installed. X Factor is not about music—it’s a marketing exercise. Almost no-one that comes through it has enough longevity to survive in the industry for a year, and that’s in part because Cowell moves right on to the next cash cow. Secondly, if you take Cowell out of the equation, you have a teenager who wouldn’t be in that position anyway. Cowell installed him there. Without Cowell, he’s just another kid who can sing a bit.

And you know what? I don’t feel sorry for Joe in the slightest. He’s a kid who, at worst, will have a number-two single for relatively little effort. He’s not had to spend years of his life playing to a dozen people in crappy pubs all over the UK. He’s not had to battle to get A&Rs to listen to his music. He’s not had to do anything bar appear on a TV show.

Cowell also notes, without irony, that it’s “David versus Goliath,” clearly forgetting that as far as the British music industry goes, he’s the biggest Goliath of them all.

This morning’s Times reports Nokia will close its Regent Street store, because it’s somehow—and this is a massive (non) shock—failed to tempt people across the road from the Apple Store. Frankly, this is mind-boggling. How a shop stocking a bunch of fairly dated and dull phones never managed to grab people from an always busy store chocked full of exciting computers, music players, multimedia devices and software is beyond me.

I tell a lie—it really isn’t. But it is, apparently, beyond CCS Insight analyst Ben Wood, who remarks in the Times article: “There was no question that the store was trying to replicate what Apple had done and build up the brand rather than shift devices. The question is why that strategy has worked for one company and not for the other.”

And this is why I hate analysts. Ben, this is your job. Are you seriously questioning why Apple’s store is a huge success and Nokia’s isn’t? Apple got there first, Nokia is a shallow copy. Apple has loads of great kit, Nokia doesn’t. Apple has a brand associated with aspirational qualities, Nokia’s brand is primarily associated with cheap phones you chunk in the bin after a year.

It’s really quite simple—unless you’re an analyst.