For years, the worst logo I ever saw was at the First Services on the M6. I used to scowl every time I saw it.

Its main crime is that it breaks my most fundamental rule when designing logos - I call it faxability - the ability to reduce the logo to one colour and still distinguish what it is but even in two colours this is an unholy mess with cutlery thrown thoughtlessly behind the lettering. There is an attempt to stroke the text outline in white but it cannot rescue the company name from the wreckage.

It succeeds in one respect, it is distinctive. But only because no one else would dare front their business with such a piece of crap.

First Motorway Services evidently couldn't care less about their corporate image because as bad as its logo is they make it look even worse by using a horribly compressed .jpg of it on their website. The web designer, if s/he wasn't puting the site together with a gun at their temple should be lynched!

A few months ago, I spent a few weeks over Christmas and New Year living on a remote beach in Scotland - I detest the consumerfest.

One day, I went with someone I had met to Fort William as they had to do some business at their bank, the Clydesdale Bank. I hadn't been exposed to corporate brow beating for a while and as i was waiting for them to be served I had time to get particularly unenthusiastic about their logo.

Or should I say logos.

The Clydesdale Bank has two very similar and equally awful logos with completely different fonts and like the ugly sisters they squabble for attention and in the confusion it is unclear which is the primary logo and which is the most grotesque - though, unfortunately for the Scots, one of them appears on Clydesdale bank notes.