It’s an easy mistake to make. When you’re asked to think about the brand of McDonald’s, you probably picture the golden arches. When you’re asked to think about the brand of Ford, I’m sure the blue oval springs to mind. It may be a little bit zen (or at least Heisenbergian), but the very act of consciously thinking about branding prevents you from experiencing it.

I’ve talked about some of these issues, independent of cigarettes, before.

To illustrate the difference consider, “And after the funeral, we’re all going to get brunch at McDonald’s”. Chances are you didn’t stop to think about their logo before deciding the Mickey D’s is a less than respectful destination for a wake. The brand of a thing is slippery; sensory cues like logos and jingles become twisted up with prior experience with the product or service to create a subconscious soup of how something feels to you.

Design considerations of the branding of cigarettes is well-tread ground. The film “Thank You for Smoking” and its fabulous opening credits does a respectful job. There’s also the series premiere of designer favorite “Mad Men”, containing this gem:

This is the greatest advertising opportunity since the invention of cereal. We have six identical companies making six identical products. We can say anything we want.

So, in many respects, the UK government finally deciding to pay attention to cigarette branding and “considering outlawing the use of logos, colours and graphics on packets and requiring them to be sold in plain packaging” is showing up un-fashionably late to the party.

The folks over at We Made This have a concept sketch of what that might look like. It’s kinda sexy and dangerous. It’s not, of course, sexy or dangerous. That’s just the transparency of Helvetica set in black on a white background allowing whatever else you already think about cigarettes to shine through. The prevalence of the International Typographical Style in modern society has repackaged “plain packaging”.

Let’s really think about logos for a moment. Do my health-conscious, eco-friendly activist friends really choose Brand “A” because of their unwavering commitment to Indigenous rights? Or even their hatred of cloven-hoofed mammals? No, it’s the subconscious soup!

Don’t get me wrong. Stripping logos off the packaging will no doubt have some effect. Analysts suggest that, “plain packaging would prompt many smokers to abandon the premium brands such as Marlboro and Benson and Hedges, and instead switch to much cheaper makes”. This is bad news for the tobacco companies and worse news for the public health folks, who were hoping to curb smoking—not drive an exodus.

The real problem here is not any cigarette’s individual brand, but the brand of smoking.

As long as guys like Don Draper include “drink and smoke constantly” in their guide to picking up women, it’s unlikely that striking the individual tobacco companies will lead to a decrease in rates of smoking.

In fact, I’d go so far as to say that as a persecuted pastime, smoking could gain an even stronger brand as cool, rebellious, revolutionary, and of course sexy and dangerous. I wouldn’t be surprised to see other products try to associate themselves with smoking in hopes that the brand would rub off on them.

As such, I’ve missed being a part of the ubiquitous post-SXSW blogging feeding frenzy that happens every year. By now all of the good bits are gone. Those more articulate than I have already dissected Bruce Sterling’s Greenspan-esque deflation of 2.0′s collective egos, noted the increased stratification of “celebrity” that vlogging has offered, and marveled at how Twitter has ushered in the beginning of a new medium or the death of all that is good about human relationships (depending who you ask).

All that’s left to blog about is how crazy sick I am.

I would classify the disease I’ve managed to come down with as half influenza and half streptococcus. Whether strepfluenza or influcoccus formally, it’s called “the Stroo” by common folk. Me, anyway. The Stroo has three exciting parts: a wicked cough, a throbbing headache, and fevered delusions.

It’s cough is nasty enough that the slightest lung tickle instantly fills me with dread. I search for a means of escape. When it finally arrives, it’s as if the Devil’s own trident has been jammed into my weakened solar plexus. I cry out. The pain rings like a church bell across a foggy meadow. Field mice look up, then scurry their children into their holes before the rain comes.

It is not enough to say that the headache throbs. Of course it throbs, all headaches feel like the throb. Yet just this morning I looked at myself, bleary-eyed and utterly destroyed, in the mirror and could see it throb. My head was growing bigger, then smaller. Like the waxing and waning moon, it seemed. Indeed, all five senses were accounted for. Not only did it feel and look like it was throbbing. It sounded, smelled, and tasted the same.

Finally, no stranger to strange dreams, the Stroo has taken my twisted id to a new level. So far I have dreamt that my cat was suing me, my officemate was bit by a vampire, and that I dropped a #2 in the middle of my bed. These dreams are not flat sketches, my fever develops them into full delusions with just enough reality to keep me worried they might be real. I was sitting at the defendant’s table with my counsel, looking my cat in her eyes as she testified from the witness stand, thinking, “How could she do this? She knows it was an accident. I’d never hurt her on purpose.” Next, before my co-worker developed full-blown vampirism, talk turned to whether our HSA would cover prevention therapy, if such therapy existed, or whether firing someone for being a vampire violated our diversity and anti-oppression policy. Finally, I lay in my bed in horror for literally hours for fear the my third dream had actually transpired—unsure how (or if!) I wanted to confirm it hadn’t.

Four different people have now all apologized for giving me whatever they had. I politely joked that I was sure I picked it up from some stranger in a crowded bar, defenses lowered by rain and free wine. Now I’m not so sure. I’m beginning to believe that each and every one of them gave me whatever they had and all of the diseases combined like the Constructicons into one massive, and probably evil, illness.