London 2012 Olympic Logo Is One Step Beyond
HOW do you encapsulate the Olympics in one single image? How do you capture the unending quest for glory, the physical perfection, the humanity, the dreams, the, erm, cheating, corruption and wanton drug taking? (Pic: Beau Bo D’Or)
Well, design agency Wolff Olins thought long and hard about their brief for the London 2012 games.
Yet after all their hard work, culminating in the unveiling of their £500,000 creation at the Camden Roundhouse today, what do they get for their trouble? Answer: howls of derision. Well, that and a very large pay packet, of course.
The new logo, which features chunky and angular numbers, was apparently created for the “Google generation”, whoever they are.
At the launch, former Tory golden boy and all-round smug so-and-so Lord Sebastian Coe says: “London 2012 will be everyone’s Games. This is the vision at the very heart of our brand. It will define the venues we build and the Games we hold, and act as a reminder of our promise to use the Olympic spirit to inspire everyone and reach out to young people around the world. It is an invitation to take part and be involved.”
However, within hours of the unveiling, an online petition had racked up almost 5,000 signatures with one angry petitioner calling the new logo “puerile rubbish” while another writes, “Any art teacher worth his crayons would have turned it down.”
London Assembly member for Brent and Harrow, Bob Blackman, adds to the voices of dissent, saying, “Lord Coe has described this logo as ‘ambitious, interactive and youth-friendly’. I would describe them as hideous.”
However, that world-renowned art and design critic, Jonathan Edwards, (who also did a bit of triple-jumping when he had the chance) responded to the negative views. Says he: “It’s funky and edgy and perhaps a bit graffiti like. It’s not a staid corporate logo like some in previous games. As soon as you do something different it’s bound to arouse a response.”
Expect Edwards to be judging the next Turner prize…
Update on this story
Posted: 4th, June 2007 | In: Broadsheets Comments (23) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink
Comments
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August 22nd, 2007 at 8:53 am
We will get laughed out of the Olympics.
I can hear the snooty chuckles of the French already…
June 21st, 2007 at 3:13 pm
Looks like Lisa Simpson giving a blowjob.
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June 16th, 2007 at 6:58 am
Logo? I thought it was Lego!
June 8th, 2007 at 2:56 pm
I’m looking forward to hearing that “Lord” Coe has resigned.
He is a smug, self-satisfied Tory git & the idiotic 80’s styled logo just shows he is not fit for purpose & could not run a proverbial heavy drinking session in a brewery.
June 6th, 2007 at 6:10 pm
Up date:
http://www.anorak.co.uk/news/back-pages/173979.html
June 6th, 2007 at 9:53 am
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June 5th, 2007 at 11:14 pm
Anyone see the news tonight, they have had to stop the diver on the website and on tv as people are having fits
June 5th, 2007 at 6:05 pm
Laurence - you have polluted my mind. I read your letter. I looked. Egads! You have seen it for what it truly is. It is filth! what pervert dreamt this sickness up. I will use your comment on the front page to illustrate how easily we can be sucked into a web of depravity… I feel ashamed…
June 5th, 2007 at 3:34 pm
Not having seen LS give head I dunno
But that logo would make one ill
june
June 5th, 2007 at 3:11 pm
Who would have thought anyone could have designed such a shite logo?
I can’t look at the thing without seeing Lisa Simpson giving head.
Am I ill or do you agree?
June 5th, 2007 at 2:13 pm
You saw it in motion on tv? you poor soul, I saw it first on my news page on here - static, thank goodness.
Is it all singing, all dancing, all caber tossing too? I’d want something for my money. Although a length if intestine would suffice
June
June 5th, 2007 at 1:29 pm
At the risk of sounding like a grumpy old curmudgeon, this design is emblematic of the problems of NuLab Britain: a high-minded, conceited & vague concept (based on universal inclusiveness of ‘everyone’ (presumably even those who like neither sport nor London?) as a to-be-pleased target audience, passed over to a clever consultancy (who must have realised pretty quickly that they’d never be able to produce anything satisfying…but, like good business people, tried their best for their fee (which presumably included God knows how many briefings, alternative designs etc etc).
No doubt the suits - in Olympic and Government circles - were taken in by the original concept and the creatively wordy justifications for the designs - full of horrible PC-speak - they would have had to sit in on…
Bloody hell, a child in front of a PC for 20 minutes could have come up with something better - in fact, several did, judging from some of those submitted to this morning’s Beeb’s Breakfast programme - one in particular being very clever (where the calligraphy for L O N D was styled in a way that looked lilke 2 0 1 2…)
And, finally, to round off this rantette, WTF is it with the ‘quiver’ effect?…it nearly gave me a fit (even though I’m not epileptic) when I saw it juddering around all over the place on TV last night.
June 5th, 2007 at 1:25 pm
Why is offensive about this demented jigsaw? I think i see a corner piece…
June 5th, 2007 at 11:27 am
As for design by committee, I agree this might well have had a lot to do with in but to be a trusted and respected design agency, surely you should be able to consult not just advise!
June 5th, 2007 at 11:25 am
Do not offend anyone?
Oh how PC….Please, that logo is massively offensive !
June 5th, 2007 at 8:41 am
That brief in full: “Do Not Offend Anyone”
June 5th, 2007 at 8:32 am
Pete, if you do really own an agency I’m suprised you lay the blame at Wolff Ollins - you should know as well as me (I am also a design professional) that agencies rarely get the design their own designers want approved. This logo for the 2012 games would appear to be a textbook case:
Q: What is a camel?
A: A horse designed by committe.
You should know that when large numbers of design-illiterate people have the power to veto perfectly good design in preference of their own taste (or lack thereof) and their desire to ‘make their mark’ on said design process one almost always ends up with a horrific car-crash of a final design. This has nothing to do with the undoubted talents of perfectly capable designers and everything to do with the petty ambitions and hubris of the 2012 committee led by Lord Coe and his acolytes.
Of course, the fact they had unlimited public funds with which to exercise their carefree self-interest chafes somewhat… but in the final analysis the committee got what they deserved.
A camel.
June 5th, 2007 at 6:59 am
£400,000, what a joke. I know how much it would cost for an agency to develop such a logo as I own one myself. I really wish this logo thing would go away as it demeanours and devalues the entire design profession. I would publically sack the creative lead and account manager at Wolf Olins, today preferably!
There is nothing more cringe worthy than to see a disconnected designer trying to enguage with his/her audience. This patronising logo breaks all graphic design rules (therefore looks amateur in all ways possible) it is also illegible as the second 2 is totally inconsistent with the first 2, the line spacing and character consistency for the font used for the word London appears to be allover the place. The logo will be difficult to view on a mobile phone now and for at least the next 2 years,
My company also does identity design. Off the top of my head, you could have made it provocative, qwerky (If that was the brief) and enguaging to use filled circles of the Olympic flag and move them around to for set of polcadot arrays ala:Damien Hirst - (£400K PLEASE!)
As a process, we would have recommended a public vote on 3-4 conceptual logos to depersonalise the design agency’s opinion and get buy in from the general public….
£400k, spend it well WO. Gone have the days when you can say you did the Orange and disastrous 3 logos, you will now definitely be judged on you latest piece of work (at last!)
June 5th, 2007 at 12:30 am
Hmm…the problem was in the brief. As Seb Coe said: “London 2012 be ‘everyone’s games’”? In trying to produce a logo to please ‘everyone’, they’ve ended up producing something that is meaningless to everyone…less hyperbole and something more down to earth and London-focused, please!
June 4th, 2007 at 11:46 pm
Yes , and less Mayor Livingstone
June 4th, 2007 at 11:34 pm
More London, innit
June 4th, 2007 at 11:31 pm
think Beau Bo’s is much better