The rather predictable response from the majority of the online community who care about such matters is to blast ITV, the health and safety smokescreen reason and pine for t’old days. Percy Cobblers writes on the Manchester Evening News website that he remembers coming home from weekends in Blackpool and the warm glow he used to get as soon as he saw ‘the sign’.

We’ve been here before. I was, like most, disappointed when the Hacienda nightclub was prematurely subjected to the lecherous overtures of city centre property developers. But the old dog had seen better days and though I feel the space could have been reinvented as another nightclub to herald the birth of a new era in Manchester, at least it prevented any dilution of a true cultural modern legend.

It also felt like we had lost a member of the Mancunian family when Boddingtons stopped production at their equally iconic brewery in Strangeways. But I still enjoy a taste of the creamy stuff now and again and it’s worth remembering we have a load of other fantastic local breweries.

Back to the Granada sign and what it represented, in all its Stymie Bold Italic glory. The slab serif typeface was hugely popular with designers in the 50s and 60s proving itself a great performer in tricky or challenging print conditions like newsprint where a finer serif may have lost its definition.

But, even by the late sixties, Granada had undertaken a rebranding exercise, developing its identity to incorporate the Clarendon typeface and the introduction of the rather more recognisable G north symbol. So about 40 years ago or so Sidney Bernstein had already decided the old Stymie Bold faithful was outdated. Since then the Granada identity evolved many times before finally retiring gracefully as a sub-brand of its ITV parent, north-western roots long since abolished.

The truth is that this red neon assault on the visual senses had become a clue to the past, not a key to the future. It was tired and reminiscent of an Eastern bloc city landscape from decades ago.

My reaction is to let this hideous incarnation go entirely. In fact, really the whole building would go if I had a say. I’m sorry but most buildings that cropped up around our region between 1950 and 1970 are a shocking reflection on the architects and town planners of the day.  Surely we have enough museums to cater for this sort of retrospective nostalgia?

So, instead of public debate on what has now gone let’s be creative about what’s next. Does Manchester need a new addition to the city centre skyline that shouts the here, the now and the future? As the Beetham Tower continues to divide opinion I think it does.

Something to inspire Mancunians and position the city as a genuine creative and commercial force.

After all, when Benjamin Disraeli once famously said ‘What Manchester does today, the world does tomorrow’ he meant it. What he didn’t mean is that when Manchester puts up a f*cking red neon sign, 50 years later people will moan their arses off when it comes down again.

Keep on Moving.

Anything worth publishing through any media probably deserves to be read, not admired for it’s design integrity but ignored because the body copy has been produced in type that induces a headache to focus on. I cringe when I read recruitment adverts with type you struggle to read where the advertiser has attempted to squeeze the best part of a service contract into a 4 x 3col MEN advert. I cringe further when I see bus rears you can’t read from the car behind. Billboards you have to stop to read. Anything at all in print where white type has filled in. And not because of the poor chap printing the paper in the middle of the night but because a designer didn’t bother checking the production specifications of said newspaper.

So not for the first time today, I asked a designer to amend some type…

Chief Chunk: “What I want is for the message to be a bit more engaging. A bit more oomph. Bolder. A bit of stand-out. In your face…you know, a bit…?”.

Designer: “Chunky?”

Chief Chunk: “Yes, please”.

I really shouldn’t stick my nose in but I do love chunky type. Cue designer’s guffaws, comments…