So today it was just me and my shaky design skills. I avoided all the usual distractions: email, phone, Mongol hordes at the door. I had to break the spell of the blank canvas syndrome, which had so crippled me over the last few days.

I received a fax from my client Ignacious Spore. I'm not sure how, because I don't have a fax machine. It read ‘Are you up yet?' There was no escape.

I began to study the worst logo in the world - a simple monogram of the letters ‘IS' in a relative of Helvetica. Spore had limited imagination. The bold forms of the letters twisted and turned in my mind, and seconds evolved into minutes which became hours.

Eventually I could only see the monogram as a word. The word ‘is'. In the intensity of my concentration the word began to take on a mystical form. It was zen-like in its beauty and simplicity. Maybe this was the religious symbology that Spore was referring to.

Maybe in fact it wasn't the worst logo in the world. Maybe it was brilliant. Maybe it was like the ‘fcuk' logo - it was so appalling it had to be genius.