If you haven’t already seen the new coinage, you are in for a treat.

Matthew Dent, a graphic designer who won the competition to do the first major redesign of the full collection of UK coins since decimalisation in 1971, has come up with a delicious and contemporary new look.

There is something very solid about the coin, and this is a rare opportunity to make a very significant impact with design. I would describe British currency as a design classic in itself (not discounting some of the other great coins I’ve seen around the globe), and would place it in a similar camp to stamps in terms of distribution and gravitas. It’s funny to reflect on this, but I suspect if you ask many people what makes them British or gives them British identity, apart from drizzle, tea and Nectar points, the queen’s head on our coins would probably surface more than a handful of times.

That’s why this redesign was very important, and I’m pleased to see something that really can be commended on all fronts.

The outlines and weights have been retained, a sensible idea. The reduction in the size and weight of the 10 pence, 5 pence and 50 pence pieces in the past 15 years have made our coinage fairly manageable, and when making such a dramatic change to the faces, it seems only suitable to retain this major identifier.

Secondly and most importantly for me, the cut of the design is beautiful. Even someone who shifts pixels for a career, I can only begin to imagine how much agony went into getting the design and typography ‘just’. I’m so pleased they have spaced the design out as much as they have, it defies the obvious wonderfully.

The subject matter (the royal heraldic shield) cleverly ties up the problem of finding a separate identifier for each coin. In a time when there is so much debate about what truly justifies itself as being british or inclusive or whatever, it seems far better to use a symbol that is both recognised and less contentious than some other icons. I’m not saying there aren’t connotations, but I think this is a good way to go, and assuming we don’t become a republic in the next 40 years they should last too…

I’m interested to know what will be printed on the circumferences, but really I’m keen just to see them minted. Stacking coins will never be so boring again.

One slight question that still remains is whether completely removing the numerical value from the coin face will work. I’ve been to many places and it’s usually been the one sure-fire constant. On the other hand, maybe it couldn’t be a stronger representation of the British need to assert ourselves by requiring the user to understand English in order to purchase even the cheapest items…

There has been plenty going on with me in the past few days. What with the completion and delivery of a piece important print work this week (with a Sunday to-press deadline) it wasn’t much of a weekend.

I’ve finally encountered the swathe of completions and launches for projects that have been ongoing (there are one or two anomalies that are yet to be mopped up, but on the whole things are wrapping up nicely).

Monday was no let up, heading to London for a meeting in South Kensington and an introduction to yet another exciting project. After all the formalities of work, I managed to track down probably my longest-term associate and friend (it’s hard to know someone longer than a person who you first encountered on the day you were both born - a day neither of us can truthfully say we remember) and we went for a couple of drinks to catch up on two years of life. Andy (we share the same name too) is an accomplished jazz musician, while I am a web type, but we’ve both ended up following the self-employed path. The number of coincidences between us including others probably are matched by an equal number of unrelated events, but I find it amusing how around 15 years ago (after a period of time when our two families had lost touch with each other), I was helping Dad cut down a hedge in the back garden of our new house, and we were all a little more than surprised to find that we’d moved in next door to each other. Despite all the odd gaps, the geographical differences and the rest, we always seem to manage to start conversations where we left off. It’s the only time I ever wonder whether your date of birth actually does have any possible influence on the way things pan out, and I’m certainly not one for believing those types of things.

Also today, quite surprisingly I came to learn that Dan had managed to inadvertently stumble across the co-founder of Tangerine design agency while organising some rental transport for him. Dan recognised the name of the complex where his customer worked, and mentioned he had previously collaborated with a design agency in the same estate. It turns out Dan’s customer was now working for the very same company, but had previously been attached to a rather more well known ID outfit.

Dan didn’t recognise the name of the agency ‘Tangerine’ (I could have told him who they were straight away), but the customer soon enlightened him that he had co-founded it few years ago with a bloke called Jonathan Ive. Had I been in the car I think I’d have a few more question. This opportunity was probably as close as you could get to achieving any kind of insight into the notoriously elusive designer’s method. Either way, I still find it highly amusing that Dan managed to get into a conversation with his ex-business and design partner, especially whilst doing something completely unrelated to design.

Only every twelve months do I upgrade my phone, so it is truly a ‘special’ delivery when the postman arrives with a little white note and a pen asking for my autograph.

This is the first time I haven’t really thought long and hard about which phone came next, I’d resigned to the fact that Sony Ericsson tend to make fantastic mobiles, and so plumped for the highest spec one they do in what I call the ‘work’, and they call the ‘K’ series. I don’t know what the K stands for, but much like CYMK, it doesn’t really matter as long as you know it’s important (the K in CMYK stands for Key actually).

I approached my contract renewal with the sole aim to keep my bill down yet gain as many minutes as possible. I have therefore, ended up on an 18 month contract for the first time. No iPhone for me anytime soon I predict.

The fact is, I only really buy phones for two reasons (excluding phone calls, obviously). The first is the camera. I could have gone for the N95 with all it’s bells and whistles, but even the owners who really should love the thing can’t say much nice about it. Much like Cameron Diaz in a chastity belt; everything you could ever desire is inside, but it’s just so damn hard to get at.

At the moment, 5 megapixels is king (that is unless you want to spend the GDP of a small African nation on a handset). As a person who in 2003 used to parade around with a 5MP camera as the greatest thing I ever bought whilst most people were still asking what ‘digital’ was, I feel slightly wary of my newest purchase. After all, it’s only 3.3 megapixels less than my DSLR, and in the 12 months since I bought my last phone we’ve gained 1.8MP on the previous version.

Anyway, I digress. Five million dots was the lowest I was going to settle for, so if it was going to be a Sony, it had to be this model.

The second major feature I need is synchronicity. My Mac’s, my phone - they both have to mirror all of my contact details for reasons including theft, loss and the knowledge that everyone I know is contactable no matter how drunk I am or what time it is.

Well all modern phones have that feature these days (Bluetooth), but the calendar and contact updating always impressed me on my W800i and K800i previously, so no reason to change what works.

So, I made a blind purchase. The guy on the phone offered me a deal I couldn’t refuse and although I’d never seen anything but a photo of the thing, I knew it was the handset for me.

Well, I may have been a little naive in not having a proper play beforehand. Although on the whole it is a very nice Sony Ericsson from the same mould as it’s two predecessors, it does lack a little in joined-up thinking. It’s not the software which has been improved upon - very well in most cases. It’s not the battery, SIM and memory stick access - a brilliant improvement. It’s not the display - brighter, more clear and sharper than ever. The main issue I have is with the keypad.

It maybe a ‘getting used to it’ thing, but my major bug bear is that although the keypad buttons are beautifully spaced, they are just about the same height as the amount of flesh required to squash-in when you try to press them. Hence, much like a overweight cat sitting on a remote control, the buttons are completely covered, but don’t actually press in.

My solution to this would be my nail (thankfully since I stopped biting them in India, I now have some), but the convex shape of the buttons means all but the most concave of fingernails can press them. This means that my rather ‘pointy’ and ‘nail-like’ nails slide around as though they’re competing in the Winter Olympics.

I do seem to be getting the grip of it, but it has taken a day or so. It will get easier with time, but after just picking up and playing with my old K800i again for five minutes, I think I will miss the big, hit-them-with-a-baseball-bat style buttons.

The other major button errors are the navigation keys. For the K850i, the joystick has become a thing of the past which is unfortunate if you like amusing yourself with Java games, because it’s not so easy anymore. However I’m not overly enamored by games, so I’m just trying to get used to the Big Blue Thing that replaces the joystick and loops around the 2 and 5 keys. It isn’t really bad, but still, bring the stick back - we’re in the middle of a 1980’s revival, we should be embracing these types of old-skool technologies.

The four (or two) silver navigation keys (depending on how you look at it) really are too small considering this a phone and accepting calls/hanging up are pretty important in my old fashioned view of things. However the biggest departure in navigation is the touch-sensitive (light-sensitive) menu buttons at the base of the screen.

Initially I didn’t enjoy them, but I’m pretty fond of them and their animations now. With no tactile response, it seems odd that you’d implement just three buttons using this technology. Then again, they didn’t use much logic in designing the rest of the keypad, so why start using those brains now.

Otherwise, they’ve taken a big step in the right direction. The camera is a real camera. It has ISO selection, metering, a proper mode switch, shutter release and on/off button on the side. The lens is now sensibly protected by a clear cover rather than the fantastically effective crumb and dust pit that previous models came with. It also lights up like Kit from Knightrider, which means if the spinning light ever dies on your Sky+ box you can just sellotape your K850i to the front of it with the shutter open and party on down.

Ok, so it’s missing optical zoom, and WiFi. It’s not really a cutting edge departure in design, and it’s sort of ‘gone a bit Britney Spears’ on the keypad layout. But hey, it’s new, it’s shiny, it’s a SonyEricsson and I’ve got so many more minutes now that I’m going to have to start making new friends just to mop up the call allowance.

The Multipack site has been in need of some attention for a while, and although we often discuss it at meetings, not much ever seems to change – we’re all too busy to do anything about it.

It took most of Saturday, a pub lunch, plenty of peanuts, quavers, beer and diet coke, but we’ve made some in roads into the code side of things. Tasked with design, Gaz, Owen and myself got the basics nailed down pretty quickly, but the final design was a little less forthcoming.

Despite having the whole day to take photos, I totally forgot, so you’ll have to rely on everyone else. We were based up in the Custard Factory at the new offices of One Black Bear and spent a lot of time swimming in mac paraphernalia – there isn’t much else in there.

Anyway, there is progress, as yet not that tangible, but it’s a good start.

With regard to the rest of the weekend – I went for a drink with Jon and Rosie on Friday in a pub I didn’t know existed, then on Saturday bumped into another John back from university while getting onto the train.

I got asked to be in a TV documentary this week, but have turned it down. Such are the pressures of life on the famous and well-loved.

OK, so you’ll have to work out whether this list is chicken-and-egg; based only on my biased opinion of brands because they are the ones I have come to trust most out of those I use on a day-to-day basis, or whether I am attracted them on a day to day basis because they are great brands.

Transport For London

The quintessential transport brand. I love the level of detail exercised by the designers at TfL as they constantly keep the bar as high if not higher than similar organisation. It always amazes me how much money and time is injected into making you feel like you are being looked after. Even the temporary signage is finished immaculately.

Living in an area where public transport has suffered tremendously from a lack of cohesion until recently, London’s beautifully simple signage, typography, subtle individuality (the slight differences in the application of the logo at each Underground station) and seamless link between all forms of travel just oozes the best of what can be achieved with great design.

I’ve travelled on some pretty impressive, heavily funded public transport in a number of countries in recent years, and nowhere have I found anything that rivals this London classic.

BBC

In my mind the BBC still manages to maintain a record of getting it right. It’s not even down to the individual details in their design output – as recently I wrote – but in the overall feeling that the brand exudes in total.

The BBC has managed to remain without external advertising for over 80 years now, and the auxilliary benefit of this (especially in this market/advertising led world) is that it remains solely responsible for it’s own image. It’s level of self-checking is higher than probably any other media organisation in the world, and so the brand is bolstered by a feeling of superiority over the competition, worldwide.

It’s not that other broadcasters haven’t achieved something spectacular with their identity. Channel 4 has generated an outstanding brand – but the BBC remains like solid granite and consistently successfully manages to stay up-to-date without damaging it’s overall image of credibility.

Virgin

Virgin’s proliferation of business interests doesn’t seem to dilute it’s highly individual style (what other company is bold enough to choose a sexually-related phrase as it’s identity, and write only in white on red?).

Admittedly, some of the enterprises listed on the Virgin Website seem a little bit like the usual resources were not allocated, but on the whole this has got to be one of the most instantly recognisable cross-branding exercises known.

Virgin’s strongest coups are made in media advertisments both print and screen. They were one of the first to start using ‘speak to me’ style language and have continued to provide laterally-generated solutions that aren’t always the most successful, and aren’t always the most obvious, but generally are eye catching.

Even though Virgin Trains is a by-word for inefficiency, and Virgin Mobile always looked like the runt of the pack, overall they manage to maintain a very strong identity across the field.

Current.tv

The youngest of my choices, Current is a magazine channel bringing the best of what YouTube style journalism could bring to the screen and pushing the envelope in creative broadcasting.

Although most people don’t necesserily know what Current is, or recognise the brand, I still think it’s amorphous nature (apart from the logo, very little remains similar from one ident to the next) makes it one of the most interesting and devious ones about – especially in traditional screen media.

I’m not entirely sure the channel has got it quite right throughout. The young and often clumsy presenting sometimes look like the pioneering style of Channel 4’s T4 gone wrong, but it’s the combination of new approaches of mixing media with technology, and showcasing raw, highly creative talent that give it a feel good factor.

The Guardian

I’m not a regular newspaper junkie anymore, and never have been a devoted Guardian reader (though I rarely read any other). The thing is though, out of all the newspapers, The Guardian seems to have made the transition from traditional-to-modern broadsheet without sacrificing integrity or layout.

The introduction of the miniature Times and Independent were great moves, but I don’t think it had anywhere near the level of impact that refreshed Guardian had on making a broadsheet digestible.

Firstly, the new typography is stunning, and the use of colour, space and layout makes this still supersized paper a joy to open up. Until the design refresh, I couldn’t have really told the difference between many of these papers. The Times maybe slipped a couple of extra columns to every page, and The Independent had some very large percentages in a serif font splashed across the front, but it was the bold strap of colour and highly readable type that really made me sit up and notice that one paper was now leading the eye-catchability war.

Politically of course the Guardian represents a certain route, but with or without a political motive, this paper delivers the news in the most affable way of all the heavy-texters.

Overview

There are of course many other brands I put up as contenders for the five spaces I have filled here, but I think I’ll revisit this sometime in the future and add some more then. If you have suggestions for brands that really impress, I’d like to hear about them.

With rumblings in the pipework of Ford parting with the British based firm Jaguar, the designers appear to have finally upped their game and are showing their newest and far more aggressive looking car, the XF, at the Frankfurt Motor Show.

My view on Jaguar over the past few years has been mixed. I initially loved the shape of the XK8/R/RR, but after a few years came to realise that it seems to be firmly stuck in the 1990’s – along with their other offerings of the S- and X-types which both seemed to become more and more ‘weak-nosed’ (a thing that I really dislike – the effect that the car is dipping into the road – a common feature in Mercedes styling also).

But finally I think we’re seeing a change, and it is a most definite departure from the traditional Jaguar line.

The reason that Jaguar appears to have stayed with smoother curves on it’s previous models is down to pedigree. The Mk2, the E-Type, the Sovereign – each was made from a number of sweeping surfaces. But by the time we got to the early 00s, demand for this styling had dwindled.

Jaguar’s tightened curved styling is often tagged as effeminate and lacklustre – with such plain uninteresting panels (present on such cars at the MGF, Jag XK8, Mazda MX5) all looking tired and uninspiring.

I’ve believed that we needed something more aggressive injected back into car design for a number of years now. Until the launch of the BMW Z4, I hadn’t seen any ‘new’ car that really impressed me.

What arrived with the Z4 was ‘slash styling’ – broken surfaces which have been carried through the BMW range and I think really add interest to the new models. Ford, Renault and Vauxhall have all adopted sharper and edgier details over the past ten years, as have the premium manufacturers (Lamborghini, Aston Martin, Bentley), but I still think BMW is leading the way.

Finally, a decade after everyone else started doing it, Jaguar have stepped into line. The new XF looks like it carries something from the Aston Martin gene-pool (especially from the rear) – I wouldn’t be surprised if the design team shared designers. It looks slightly like it’s slightly stockier though – borrowing the Bentley’s chunky and solid midriff. Is it simply a hybrid of existing ideas?

Well yes, at least partly. There are some more original elements (the chrome flashing on the windows and the sculpted hub caps), though I’m not entirely convinced by the pursed grill on the front, but it is an improvement on the previously tame front end of it’s predecessors.

It’s not just the outside that is impressive. The console looks beautifully executed, using interesting veneers and subtly textured metals to create a very clean space, though I’m not sure about the way a number of the controls have been resolved. That said, the air vents, the radio, fan and rotary gear change dials are sublime.

The aggression of modern car styling is present throughout, and I think they will have widened their appeal with this model. From the photos, the Jaguar XF really looks like it carries some of the pedigree of £110,000 car. I think it will be a success, but I do think there has been some significant compromise here – it leans heavily on styling of existing luxury models and I don’t think it sets itself as a brand apart.

It certainly will appeal to anyone who would love to own a more expensive car, but hasn’t quite got the means to buy one. Cynical pandering to the markets to make sales and salvage the company, or a genuine to attempt to reinstate Jaguar as a world leader in cutting edge design? I think I know where I’d put my money.

The week gone by has been pretty good for catching up, as weeks for catching up go. What with the London visit at the weekend, I followed it all with a curry and drinks with Jon on Tuesday (trying out the Z4 – nice), then a pub run with Tom last night, though my scheduled housewarming with Will and Charlotte was postponed.

I also heard from yet another Tom from the old skool, who has passed some work my way. I think I’ve managed to salvage a pretty good social calendar for the past sever days considering how despondent I was becoming two weeks ago. Such is the life of a busy freelancer.

I read an article this week that Mark Boulton mentioned and was motivated to do something with my creativity. As a result, I think my output that day improved and I managed to tackle a couple of design problems that I had been stumbling to resolve for sometime – I even got all ‘modern’ with a brand wheel I’ve been working on as part of a collaboration with Rattle. Different, but very enjoyable.

I’ve been really impressed with new TV comedy Outnumbered on BBC One. Definitely my One to Watch at the moment.

Finally, and on a hopeful note, I wish adventurer Steve Fossett the best of luck wherever he is. Hopefully the search and rescue operation will soon conclude with him being found safe and well.