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2012 Olympic Logo: Fiasco or Success?
What a logo weekend! There's been quite a bit of conversation about the Peopleized logo on yesterday's post and unless you have been sleeping under a rock for the past few days then you are aware of the overwhelmingly negative response about the London 2012 Olympic logo. It’s hard to realize at first, but the logo is in a psychedelic form of 2-0-1-2 with the host city’s name and the Olympic logo. But was it worth the $800,000 they paid for it?Here it is! This is what almost everyone has been talking about lately:
The Olympics 2012 logo breaks every design rule in the book. It is not simple, it is not memorable, it is not beautiful. Not surprisingly, a lot of bloggers are taking about it and most most of them hate it. Some furious protesters have already launched an online petition against it with some 50,000 signatures already.
BBC reports a segment of animated footage promoting the 2012 Olympics has been removed from the organisers' website after fears it could trigger epileptic seizures. Ignore the Lisa Simpson bit in the end and don't watch it if you are susceptible to an epileptic seizure:
When I first saw the logo, I didn’t think much of it. However, after looking at the logos done by BBC News readers, in particular the thumbnail that represents today's post, I thought I should put my humble opinion out there. First, let's have a look at what the users submitted as alternative logos.
Some cheeky ones:
Some nice ones:
VERDICT: Ugly, complicated, and expensive. It will be a great success!
To be frank, I prefer the logo that costs $800,000 (does it really cost that much or is it just hyped?) to silhouettes of the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben, or five London Eyes interlocked. It might not be nice to look at but that is not my point here. Neither is "it doesn't mean anything" or "there is no message behind it" argument. Maybe "meaning nothing" was the intention.
The point is, the logo itself made a worldwide impact. Call it ugly, outrageous, or madness, and you will find yourself among those who noticed an olympic logo - something no one cared about until now. Just the number of people overreacting to the logo alone, before seeing how it will fit into the London 2012 brand campaign in general, shows that this will be an olympic logo all of us will remember. One that lives beyond and outside of the 2012 Olympic Games themselves.
Honestly, do you remember any of the past Olympic logos at all?
Will you remember them, say, 20 years later?
Like Seth says, "a great logo doesn't mean anything until the brand makes it worth something" and he is absolutely correct. I think the London 2012 Olympic logo is executed well. Maybe it will grow on you too. After all, it does look like fungus.
15 thoughts:
Lool! Ilker, you never cease to amaze me!
I remember Barcelona and Sydney. :)
The new London logo... is not so bad! It is bold, different, unique.
It is modern and urbane.
With a good marketing it will generate a lot of buzz. As a matter of fact, it already does. People talk about it. As ugly and cold as they think it is, this logo has done its job and it will be remembered.
And that's what logos are all about.
Great post!
I remember the Athens one. It wasn't trying to be too clever. It was classic.
I remember the Sydney one.. I don't think I've ever even seen the Athens one and I've never seen the Beijing one.
But $800,000 for that logo? I don't think it's worth it. They could have paid $1,000 for an ugly logo if they want it to be remembered for being ugly. Same effect, just $799,000 cheaper.
But really $800,000 for a logo! Lol. That's hard to believe. How many people work on a logo? Or does all that money go to a single person? That's crazy. I should be a logo designer.
I disagree. The logo is garbage, and it will only be remembered as a failure. The first "Nice" logo is great.
Sign the petition to change the olympic logo
The Olympic Games have a very powerful logo: the 5 rings!
Everything else doesn´t seem like a logo to me - it´s just an extentsion like "Virgine Mobile", "Google Maps" etc...so who cares?!
Oh and yes..I remember the Athens one - but only because I remember the games so clearly ;)
What are my thoughts Ilker?
I wrote a "pretty much identical" post a few days back... http://www.techzi.net/articles/2007/06/06/london-2012-design-your-own/
I'm going to disagree with Mihaela and say that I don't think it's memorable. It's certainly not scalable.
What pains me is all the newspapers who are saying, "Why not get school kids to design it? Then we could give the money to schools."
School kids cannot design! This has set the UK design industry back by many years in my opinion.
As for the cost, £400,000 wouldn't be for the logo on its own. That would include the whole brand package: website, guidelines, marketing material etc.
The logo with towers and all is a tad too phallic for my taste.
The interlocking squares looks okay. I prefer the interlocking circles. The roundness is more pleasant to the eye than angles of sqaures.
You made a very good point. I didn't recall either of those two logos!
Hm, the first few are a little weird, but they get better from there!
I like the Atlanta Olympics' logo the best.
I think the logo idea sucks indeed.
It will make a great job tho on printed stuff like t-shirts, banners, food packaging and such...
That London Olympic logo which the organisers/officials are defending and say we’ll have to get used to and cost hundreds of thousands of pounds is only being defended because it cost so much, in my opinion.
If it had only cost 5 grand, they would have seen how bad it is and not felt stupid to face up to it and say ‘lets move on with a new design’, but to admit to wasting that kind of money on something rubbish would rightly make them look beyond stupid.
Maybe just slightly more dumb than defending it.
They could let the public submit ideas for ten pounds each and get a much better logo, and their money back into the bargain.
Show up the company that did such a nasty job.
yo.. really like this style :)
What do you think? Post your thoughts..