Thanks but no thanks. But thanks!

I got an email from design behemoth Pentagram yesterday, just to say that they were unable to answer my questions on design ethics:

Unfortunately I am unable to help with your request.  As you can understand Pentagram is an extremely busy company and all the designers rarely have spare time to help out with student enquiries.

Pentagram is inundated with student requests and rather than reply to some we have a policy that the designers are not given questionnaires or surveys to complete at any time.

To be perfectly honest I expected this kind of response from most of the companies I contacted but this was in fact the only one. The email did however end on a positive note:

I am sorry if this is of no use to you. However, if you e-mail me your address then I will send you some promotional material if this will be of some help with your studies.

Naturally I supplied my address and this morning I got a lovely package of three little books in the post:

Not bad, eh? Thanks Pentagram!