So. Let’s see. This is what 400,000 British Pounds buys you these days. With the hubbub reaching a crescendo across the pond, it’s time to start laughing at the spectacle of overpaid designers going all retro ‘80s New York Subway tag with the frickin’ Olympic Games Logo in a hamfisted effort to make the games relevant for young people. Or so the news reports state. Right before they get to the positively scathing words.
One report (Fox News, natch!) goes so far as to say that the animated version found online can cause seizures. Elsewhere, a BBC interviewee gave this take as a measure of the logo’s unhipness (best read in an Ali G. voice): “the equivalent of yer Dad dancing at a party, down wiv the kids innit.” But so far the winning description for me has to be the BBC Sport-penned version: “It looks like a logo designed for young people by old people who don’t understand young people.”
But whatever you think of it, at least graphic design is front and center in the consciousness of Britons and many others. Wolff-Olins, the logo’s designer, may not be digging the scrutiny, but at least their name is blazing from inbox to inbox faster than Ben Johnson.
Needless to say, this forest fire rages on. A petition is currently circulating to flat reject the logo. Meanwhile, the always-entertaining Sun commissioned a monkey, a blind lady and a 12-year-old boy to make logos—in two hours—as a demonstration of displeasure. After the jump, here are a few of the better takes from other Organics from our internal e-mail thread.
Daniel Turman, with mad props to Kelley Barry for starting the conversation!
“I nearly fell off my chair when I saw this yesterday. Were the designers watching countless reruns of 1980s MTV episodes? For an event that is about competition, sportsmanship, tradition, and celebration, why develop something that looks best on a Slurpee cup?”—Trevor Jones
“It’s one thing to have a poor marketing campaign, it’s quite another if it causes your audience to have seizures.”—Robert Lerchenfeld
“They did a piece on the seizures that this has caused this morning on The Today Show. While laughing, Matt Lauer said, 'Not the best looking logo I’ve ever seen!'”—Kathryn Huggins
“Until I read the FoxSports article that Eric sent out, I didn’t realize that the logo is actually the numbers 2012. I just saw malformed squares.”—Steve Conroy
“And I would have never known that it was actually the numbers 2012 unless you had said that. It looked more like a Z and an O on top of an R to me. I was like, 'The Olympics of ZOR?' Completely bizarre.”—Darryl Brewer
“I think I had the same design doodled on my Trapper Keeper.”—Phil Shih
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All hail the mighty ZOR!
I bow to our new Zorian overlords…
Reminds me of the over-priced rebranding of British Airways more than ten years ago, although at least that brand mark was much better thought out and executed, even if the custom art on the tails of their planes was a colassal failure.
Looks like a bad X Games logo.
While it’s always easier to be a critic than a designer, for such an important, visible event, the UK undoubtedly can create 3,249 better logos than this faux-graffiti gem.
I thought this logo was really weird and have never liked it. I didnt realize it said 2012 until you said. I thought it was just some random boxes. :s lol