Again, thanks for doing the Daily Digest, Tom. I'm really struggling to stay up past 6pm lately; although some days I am just managing to stay up until about 9pm, I'm just lying in bed watching TV - no where near enough energy to go through Flickr on a photo hunt!

Feeling a little better today but things are always subject to change with this "bug"!

Regarding the new "Crusader" brand: I thought the same thing when I woke up during the middle of the night and saw a Facebook notification on my phone. I saw the photos that were put on Facebook at about 4am and I was just so disappointed.
I've said the same about all recent brands lately. No effort goes into them and they look cheap and shabby. Admittedly, I (as we all did) thought that the "Blaydon Racers" branding was horrid - too simplistic and very boring - but now we all think that it's great. The simplicity of it brings out how good it is! I'll make an exception for the "Angel" brand, but the reason why that has a more prominent brand design is because it's a more demanded service, effectively giving it double deckers!
The font has been referred to as 'chinese'. Though I do think it looks distorted, my first thought for it being this way was so it could distract us from how bad the actual brand design is. The "jazziness" of the font would ease the badness of the design.
Logos are either side of the "Crusader" text, if I am correct... Bad mistake. Lazily put together, no effort into the design IMO.
And finally, the red stripe. I think it's the worst thing about the whole design. Looks somewhat like a Nexus stripe and totally clashes with the silver. Big no no from me - I'd much prefer to see the Renowns back with their version of the branding.

Having said all of that, only time will tell to see if the brand grows on us!